THE  INVISIBLE  CENSOR 


BY  FRANCIS  HACKETT 


NEW  YORK 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH,  INC. 

MCMXXI 


COPYRIGHT,    1921,    BY    B.    W.    HUEBSCH,    INC. 
PRINTED    IN    U.    S.    A. 


Me 


TO 

MY  WIFE 
SIGNE  TOKSVIG 

WHOSE  LACK  OF  INTEREST 
IN  THIS  BOOK  HAS  BEEN  MY 
CONSTANT  DESPERATION 


M563403 


These  sketches  and  articles  appeared  in  the 
New  Republic  and  I  am  indebted  to  the  other 
editors  for  being  allowed  to  reprint  them. 


CONTENTS 

THE  INVISIBLE  CENSOR,  i 

WHISKY,  n 

BILLY  SUNDAY,  SALESMAN,  17 

FIFTH  AVENUE  AND  FORTY-SECOND  STREET,  32 

As  AN  ALIEN  FEELS,  39 

SCIENTIFIC  MANAGEMENT,  46 

THE  NEXT  NEW  YORK,  51 

CHICAGO,  59 

THE  CLOUDS  OF  KERRY,  65 

HENRY  ADAMS,  71 

THE  AGE  OF  INNOCENCE,  80 

THE  IRISH  REVOLT,  84 

A  LIMB  OF  THE  LAW,  92 

A  PERSONAL  PANTHEON,  96 

NIGHT  LODGING,  101 

YOUTH  AND  THE  SCEPTIC,  106 

THE  SPACES  OF  UNCERTAINTY,  1 1 1 

WILLIAM  BUTLER  YEATS,  114 

"WITH  MALICE  TOWARD  NONE,"  119 

WAR  EXPERTS,  127 

OKURA  SEES  NEWPORT,  134 

THE  CRITIC  AND  THE  CRITICIZED,  140 

BLIND,  144 

"AND  THE  EARTH  WAS  DRY,"  149 

TELEGRAMS,  155 

OF  PLEASANT  THINGS,  160 

THE  AVIATOR,  165 


THE  INVISIBLE  CENSOR 

.N  OT  long  ago  I  met  a  writer  who  happened  to  ap 
ply  the  word  u  cheap  "  to  Mr.  Strachey's  Eminent 
Victorians.  It  astonished  me,  because  this  was  an 
erudite,  cultivated  woman,  a  distinguished  woman, 
and  she  meant  what  she  said. 

A  "  cheap  "  effect,  I  assume,  is  commonly  one  that 
builds  itself  on  a  false  foundation.  It  may  promise 
beautifully,  but  it  never  lives  up  to  its  promise. 
Whether  it  is  a  house  or  a  human  character,  a  bind 
ing  or  a  book,  it  proves  itself  gimcrack  and  shoddy. 
It  hasn't  the  goods.  And  of  Eminent  Victorians,  as 
I  remembered  it  (having  read  it  to  review  it),  this 
was  the  last  thing  to  be  said.  The  book  began  by 
fitting  exquisitely,  but  it  went  on  fitting  exquisitely. 
It  never  pulled  or  strained.  And  the  memory  of  it 
wears  like  a  glove. 

Now  why,  after  all,  did  I  like  this  book  so  thor 
oughly,  which  my  distinguished  friend  thought  so 
cheap?  For  many  minor  reasons  of  course,  as  one 
likes  anything  —  contributory  reasons  —  but  prin 
cipally,  as  I  laboriously  analyzed  it,  because  in  Emi 
nent  Victorians  the  invisible  censor  was  so  perfectly 
understood.  What  seemed  cheap  to  her  ladyship 
was,  I  do  not  doubt,  the  very  thing  that  made  Emi 
nent  Victorians  seem  so  precious  to  me  —  the  deft 
disregard  of  appearances,  the  refusal  to  let  decorum 
stand  in  the  way  of  our  possessing  the  facts.  This 
to  my  critic  was  a  proof  that  Mr.  Strachey  was  im- 


perceptive  and  vulgar  — "  common  "  the  ugly  word 
is.  To  me  it  simply  proved  that  he  knew  his  game. 
What  he  definitely  disregarded,  as  so  many  felt,  was 
not  any  decorum  dear  and  worth  having.  It  was 
simply  that  decorum  which  to  obey  is  to  produce 
falsification.  The  impeccable  craft  of  Mr.  Strachey 
was  shown  in  his  evaluation,  not  his  acceptance,  of 
decorum.  He  did  not  take  his  characters  at  their 
face  value,  while  he  did  not  do  the  other  vulgar 
thing,  go  through  their  careers  with  a  muck-rake. 
In  vivisecting  them  (the  awful  thing  to  do,  presum 
ably),  he  never  let  them  die  on  him.  He  opened 
them  out,  but  not  cruelly  or  brutally.  He  did  it  as 
Mr.  William  Johnston  plays  tennis  or  as  Dr.  Blake 
is  said  to  operate  or  as  Dr.  Muck  conducts  an  or 
chestra  or  as  Miss  Kellerman  dives.  He  did  it  for 
the  best  result  under  the  circumstances  and  with  a 
form  that  comes  of  a  real  command  of  the  medium 
—  genuine  "  good  form." 

The  essential  achievement  of  Eminent  Victorians 
is  worth  dwelling  on  because  in  every  book  of  social 
character  the  question  of  the  invisible  censor  is  un 
avoidably  present.  By  the  censor  I  do  not  mean 
that  poor  blinkered  government  official  who  decides 
on  the  facts  that  are  worthy  of  popular  acquaint 
ance.  I  mean  a  still  more  secret  creature  of  still 
more  acute  solicitude,  who  feels  that  social  facts 
must  be  manicured  and  pedicured  before  they  are  fit 
to  be  seen.  He  is  not  concerned  with  the  facts 
themselves  but  with  their  social  currency.  He  is 
the  supervisor  of  what  we  say  we  do,  the  watchman 
over  our  version  and  our  theoretical  estimate  of 
ourselves.  His  object,  as  I  suppose,  is  to  keep  up 
the  good  old  institutions,  to  set  their  example  be- 

[  2  ] 


fore  the  world,  to  govern  the  imitative  monkey  in 
us.  And  to  fulfill  that  object  he  continually  revises 
and  blue-pencils  the  human  legend.  He  is  con 
stantly  at  the  elbow  of  every  man  or  woman  who 
writes.  An  invisible,  scarcely  suspected  of  existing, 
he  is  much  more  active,  much  more  solidly  in 
trenched,  than  the  legal  censor  whom  liberals  de 
test. 

Every  one  is  now  more  or  less  familiar  with  the 
Freudian  censor,  the  domesticated  tribal  agent 
whose  function  it  seems  to  be  to  inforce  the  tribal 
scruples  and  superstitions  —  to  keep  personal  im 
pulse  where  the  tribe  thinks  it  belongs.  This  part  of 
the  ego  —  to  give  it  a  spatial  name  —  came  in  for  a 
good  deal  of  excited  remonstrance  in  the  early  days 
of  popular  Freudian  talk.  To-day,  I  think,  the  cen 
sor  is  seldom  so  severely  interpreted.  In  many  cases 
there  is  clearly  a  savagery  or  a  stupidity  which  brings 
about  "  the  balked  disposition,"  but  it  is  being  ad 
mitted  that  the  part  which  is  regulated  by  the  censor, 
the  u  disposition  "  end  of  the  ego,  may  not  always  be 
socially  tolerable;  and  as  for  the  "balking,"  there 
is  a  difference  between  blunt  repressiveness  and  en 
lightened  regulation.  Still,  with  all  this  acceptance 
of  ethics,  the  nature  of  the  censorship  has  to  be  re 
cognized  —  the  true  character  of  the  censor  is  so 
often  not  taste  or  conscience  in  any  clear  condition, 
but  an  uninstructed  agency  of  herd  instinct,  an  in 
stitutional  bully.  In  the  censor  as  he  appears  in 
psycho-analytic  literature  there  is  something  of  the 
archaic,  the  irrational  and  the  ritualistic  —  all  just 
as  likely  to  ask  for  decorum  for  themselves  as  is 
the  thing  in  us  which  is  against  license  and  anarchy. 

In  the  censor  for  whom  I  am  groping,  the  censor 
[  3  ] 


of  whom  Eminent  Victorians  is  so  subversive,  there 
are  particularly  these  irrational  and  ritualistic  char 
acteristics,  these  remnants  of  outgrown  institutions, 
these  bondages  of  race  and  sex,  of  class  and  creed. 
Most  biography,  especially  official  biography,  is  writ 
ten  with  such  a  censor  in  mind,  under  his  very  eye. 
Where  Eminent  Victorians  was  refreshing  and 
stumulating  was  precisely  in  its  refusal  to  keep  him 
in  mind.  Hovering  behind  Eminent  Victorians  we 
see  agonized  official  biography,  with  its  finger  on 
its  lips,  and  the  contrast  is  perhaps  the  chief  delight 
that  Mr.  Strachey  affords.  When  Cardinal  Man 
ning's  pre-clerical  marriage,  for  example,  came  to  be 
considered  by  Mr.  Strachey,  he  did  not  obey  the  con 
ventional  impulse,  did  not  subordinate  that  fact  of 
marriage  as  the  Catholic  Church  would  wish  it  to  be 
subordinated  (as  a  matter  of  "  good  taste,"  of 
course).  He  gave  to  that  extremely  relevant  epi 
sode  its  due  importance.  And  so  Manning,  for 
the  first  time  for  most  people,  took  on  the  look  not  so 
much  of  the  saintly  cardinal  of  official  biography  as 
of  a  complex  living  man. 

What  does  the  censor  care  for  this  aesthetic 
result?  Very  little.  What  the  censor  is  chiefly  in 
terested  in  is,  let  us  say,  edification.  He  aims  by 
no  means  to  give  us  access  to  the  facts.  He  aims 
not  at  all  to  let  us  judge  for  ourselves.  With  all 
his  might  he  strives  to  relate  the  facts  under  his 
supervision  to  the  end  that  he  thinks  desirable,  what 
ever  it  may  be.  And  so,  when  facts  come  to  light 
which  do  not  chime  in  with  his  prepossession,  he  does 
his  best  either  to  discredit  them  or  to  set  them  down 
as  immoral,  heretical  or  contrary  to  policy.  And 
the  policy  that  he  is  serving  is  not  aesthetic. 

[  4  ] 


A  theory  of  the  aesthetic  is  now  beside  the  point, 
but  I  am  sure  it  would  move  in  a  relation  to  human 
impulses  very  different  from  the  relation  of  the  cen 
sor.  The  censor  is  thinking,  presumably,  of  im 
mediate  law  and  order,  with  its  attendant  conven 
tions  and  respectabilities.  The  aesthetic  could  not 
be  similarly  bound.  It  is  not  reckless  of  conduct, 
but  surely  enormously  reckless  of  decorum,  with  its 
conventions  and  respectabilities  clustering  around  the 
status  quo.  Hence  the  apparent  "  revolt "  of 
modernism,  the  insurrection  of  impulse  against  edi 
fication. 

But  there  is  more  in  Eminent  Victorians  than  an 
amusing,  impish  refusal  to  edify.  There  is  the  in 
structive  contrast  between  the  u  censored  celebrity  " 
and  the  uncensored  celebrity  disinterestedly  ob 
served.  Disinterestedly  observed,  for  one  thing,  we 
get  something  in  these  celebrities  besides  patriotism 
and  mother-love  and  chastity  and  heroism.  We  get 
hot  impulses  and  cold  calculations,  brandy  and 
treachery,  the  imperious  and  the  supine,  glorious  re 
ligiousness  and  silly  family  prayers.  And  these 
things,  though  very  unlike  the  products  of  official 
photography,  are  closely  related  to  impulses  as  we 
know  them  in  ourselves.  To  find  them  established 
for  Mr.  Strachey's  "  eminent  "  Victorians  is  to  en 
joy  a  constant  dry  humor,  since  the  invisible  censor, 
the  apostle  of  that  expediency  known  as  edification, 
stood  at  the  very  heart  of  Victorianism. 

This  is  possibly  why  Samuel  Butler,  in  his  auto 
biographical  way,  is  so  remarkable  as  a  Victorian. 
In  the  midst  of  innumerable  edifying  figures,  he  de 
clined  to  edify.  When  people  said  to  him,  "  Honor 
thy  father  and  thy  mother,"  he  answered  in  effect 

[  5  ] 


that  his  father  was  a  pinhead  theologian  who  had 
wanted  to  cripple  his  mentality,  and  his  mother  was, 
to  use  his  own  phrase,  full  of  the  seven  deadly 
virtues.  This  was  not  decorous  but  it  had  the  merit 
of  being  true.  And  all  the  people  whose  unbidden 
censors  had  been  forcing  good  round  impulses  into 
stubborn  parental  polygons  immediately  felt  the  re 
lief  of  this  revelation.  Not  all  of  them  confess  it. 
When  they  have  occasion  to  speak  or  write  about 
"  mothers  " —  as  if  the  biological  act  of  parturi 
tion  brings  with  it  an  unquestionable  "  mother " 
psyche  —  most  of  them  still  allow  the  invisible  cen 
sor  to  govern  them  and  represent  them  as  having 
feelings  not  really  their  own.  But  even  this  per 
sistence  of  the  censor  could  not  deprive  Samuel 
Butler  of  his  effectiveness.  He  has  spoken  out,  re 
gardless  of  edification,  and  that  sort  of  work  cannot 
be  undone. 

A  similar  work  is  performed  by  such  highly  per 
sonal  confessants  as  Marie  Bashkirtseff  and  W.  N. 
P.  Barbellion,  and  even  by  Mary  MacLane.  The 
account  that  these  impulsive  human  beings  give  of 
themselves  is  sensational  simply  because  it  clashes 
with  the  strict  preconception  that  we  are  taught  to 
establish.  But  only  a  man  who  remembers  nothing 
or  admits  nothing  of  his  own  impulses  can  deny  the 
validity  of  theirs.  The  thing  that  takes  away  from 
their  interest,  as  one  grows  older,  is  the  unimport 
ance  of  the  censorship  that  agonizes  them.  Their 
documentary  value  being  their  great  value,  they  lose 
importance  as  more  specific  and  dramatic  documents 
become  familiar.  And  with  psycho-analysis  there 
has  been  a  huge  increase  in  the  evidence  of  hidden 

[  6  ] 


life.  It  is  the  Montaignes  who  remain,  the  confes- 
sants  who  offer  something  besides  a  psychological 
document  —  a  transcendence  which  is  not  incoherent 
with  pain. 

But  these  various  confessions  are  significant. 
They  indicate  the  existence  and  the  vitality  of  the 
censor.  They  show  that  in  the  simplest  matters  we 
have  not  yet  attained  freedom  of  speech.  Why? 
Because,  I  imagine,  the  world  is  chockful  of  assump 
tions  as  to  conduct  which,  while  irrational  and  ritu 
alistic  and  primitive,  have  all  sorts  of  sanctions 
thrown  around  them  and  must  take  a  whole  new  art 
of  education  to  correct.  Until  this  art  it  established 
and  these  assumptions  are  automatically  rectified,  it 
will  be  impossible  to  exercise  free  speech  comfort 
ably.  An  attempt  may  be  made,  of  course,  and  in 
deed  must  be  made,  but  to  succeed  too  well  will  for 
many  years  mean  either  being  exterminated  or  being 
ostracized. 

It  is  not  hard  to  show  how  each  of  us  in  turn  be 
comes  an  agent  of  the  invisible  censorship.  You, 
for  instance,  may  have  a  perfectly  free  mind  on  the 
subject  of  suffrage,  but  you  may  have  extremely 
strong  views  on  the  subject  of  sex.  (Miss  Alice 
Stone  Blackwell,  to  be  specific,  thinks  that  Fielding 
is  nothing  but  a  "smutty"  author.)  Or  you  may 
think  yourself  quite  emancipated  on  the  subject  of 
sex-desires  and  be  hopelessly  intolerant  on  the  sub 
ject  of  the  Bolsheviki.  The  French  Rights  of  Man 
held  out,  after  all,  for  the  sacred  rights  of  property 
—  and  the  day  before  that,  it  was  considered  pretty 
advanced  to  believe  in  the  divine  right  of  kings.  It 
is  not  humanly  possible,  considering  how  relative 

[  7  ] 


liberalism  is,  to  examine  all  the  facts  or  even  con 
vince  oneself  of  the  necessity  of  examining  them, 
and  in  every  case  we  are  sure  to  be  tempted  to  op 
pose  certain  novel  ideas  in  the  name  of  inertia,  re 
spectability  and  decorum.  To  dissemble  awkward 
facts,  in  such  cases,  is  much  easier  than  to  account 
for  them  —  which  is  where  the  censor  comes  in. 

I  do  not  say  that  it  is  possible  to  do  away  with 
every  discipline,  even  the  rule-of-thumb  of  decorum. 
As  a  subservient  middle-class  citizen,  I  believe  in 
the  regulation  of  impulse.  But  as  an  intellectual 
fact,  the  use  of  the  blue  pencil  in  the  interests  of 
decorum  is  exceedingly  inept.  Human  impulses  are 
much  too  lively  to  be  extinguished  by  the  denial  of 
expression.  And  if  sane  expression  is  denied  to 
them,  they'll  find  expression  of  another  kind. 

Decorum  has  its  uses,  especially  on  the  plane  of 
social  intercourse.  I  admit  this  all  the  more 
eagerly  because  I  have  seen  much  of  one  brilliant 
human  being  who  has  practically  no  sense  of  oppo 
sition.  If  he  sees  something  that  he  wants,  he  helps 
himself.  It  may  be  the  milk  on  the  lunch-table  that 
was  intended  for  Uncle  George.  It  may  be  the  new 
volume  from  England  that  it  took  nine  weeks  to 
bring  across.  It  may  be  the  company  of  some  sensi 
tive  gentlewoman  or  the  busy  hour  of  the  mayor  of 
Chicago.  The  object  makes  no  visible  difference  to 
my  friend.  If  he  wants  it,  he  sticks  out  his  hand 
and  takes  it.  And  if  it  comes  loose,  he  holds  on. 

Associated  with  this  aggressiveness  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  purpose  not  self-regarding.  The  man  is  by 
no  means  all  greedy  maw.  But  the  thing  that  dis 
tinguishes  him  is  the  quickness  and  frankness  with 
which  he  obeys  his  impulse.  Between  having  an  im- 
'  [  8  ] 


pulse  and  acting  on  it  there  lies  for  him  a  miracu 
lously  short  time. 

In  dealing  with  such  a  man,  most  people  begin 
hilariously.  Not  all  of  them  keep  up  with  him  in 
the  same  heroic  spirit.  At  first  it  is  extraordinarily 
stimulating  to  find  a  person  who  is  so  "  creative," 
who  sweeps  so  freely  ahead.  Soon  the  dull  obliga 
tions,  the  tedious  details,  begin  to  accumulate,  and 
the  man  with  the  happy  impulsiveness  leaves  all  these 
dull  obligations  to  his  struggling  friends.  His  lack 
of  decorum  in  these  respects  is  a  source  of  hardship 
and  misunderstanding,  especially  where  persons  of 
less  energy  or  more  circumspection  are  attendant. 
In  his  case,  I  admit,  I  see  the  raw  problem  of  im 
pulse,  and  I  am  glad  to  see  his  impulse  squelched. 

But  even  this  barbarian  is  preferable  to  the 
apathetic  repressed  human  beings  by  whom  he  is 
surrounded.  Harnessed  to  the  right  interests,  he  is 
invaluable  because  "  creative."  And  he  should 
never  be  blocked  in:  he  should  at  most  be  canalled. 

The  evil  of  the  censor,  at  any  rate,  is  never  illus 
trated  in  his  rational  subordination  of  impulse,  but 
in  those  subordinations  that  violate  human  and  social 
freedom.  And  the  worst  of  them  are  the  filmy,  the 
vague,  the  subtle  subordinations  that  take  away  the 
opportunity  of  truth.  Life  is  in  itself  a  sufficiently 
difficult  picture-puzzle,  but  what  chance  have  we  if 
the  turnip-headed  censor  confiscates  sotyie  particularly 
indispensable  fragment  that  he  chooses  to  dislike? 
On  reading  Eminent  Victorians,  how  we  rejoice  to 
escape  from  those  wax  effigies  that  we  once  be 
lieved  to  be  statesmen  —  the  kind  of  effigies  of  which 
text-books  and  correct  histories  and  correct  biog 
raphies  are  full!  How  we  rejoice  to  escape  from 

[  9  ] 


them,  wondering  that  they  had  ever  imposed  on  us, 
wondering  that  teachers  and  pious  families  and  loyal 
historians  ever  lent  themselves  to  this  conspiracy 
against  truth!  But  the  horrible  fact  is,  Mr. 
Strachey  is  one  in  a  million.  He  has  only  poked  his 
finger  through  the  great  spider-web  of  so-called 
"  vital  lies." 

Meanwhile,  in  the  decorous  and  respectable  bio 
graphies,  the  same  old  "  vital  lies  "  are  being  told. 
The  insiders,  the  initiated,  the  disillusioned,  are 
aware  of  them.  They  no  longer  subsist  on  them. 
They  read  between  the  lines.  And  yet  when  the 
insiders  see  in  print  the  true  facts  —  say,  about  Rob 
ert  Louis  Stevenson  or  Swinburne  or  Meredith  or 
John  Jones  —  these  very  insiders  rush  forward  with 
a  Mother  Hubbard  to  fling  around  the  naked  truth. 
We  must  not  speak  the  truth.  We  must  edify.  We 
must  bring  our  young  into  a  spotless,  wax-faced 
world. 

It  means  that  we  need  a  revolution  in  education, 
nothing  less.  It  means  that  the  truth  must  be  taken 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  censor.  We  must  be  pre 
pared  to  shed  oceans  of  ink. 


WHISKY 

IT  was  a  wet,  gusty  night  and  I  had  a  lonely  walk 
home.  By  taking  the  river  road,  though  I  hated  it, 
I  saved  two  miles,  so  I  sloshed  ahead  trying  not  to 
think  at  all.  Through  the  barbed  wire  fence  I 
could  see  the  racing  river.  Its  black  swollen  body 
writhed  along  with  extraordinary  swiftness,  breath 
lessly  silent,  only  occasionally  making  a  swishing 
ripple.  I  did  not  enjoy  looking  at  it.  I  was  some 
how  afraid. 

And  there,  at  the  end  of  the  river  road  where  I 
swerved  off,  a  figure  stood  waiting  for  me,  motion 
less  and  enigmatic.     I  had  to  meet  it  or  turn  back. 
It  was  a  quite  young  girl,  unknown  to  me,  with 
a  hood  over  her  head,  and  with  large  unhappy  eyes. 
"  My  father  is  very  ill,"  she  said  without  a  word 
of  introduction.     u  The  nurse  is  frightened.     Could 
you  come  in  and  help?  " 

There  was  a  gaunt  house  set  back  from  the  road, 
on  a  little  slope.     I  could  see  a  wan  light  upstairs. 
"  The  nurse   is  not  scared,"   the  girl  corrected, 
"  but  she  is  nervous.     I  wish  you  could  come." 

u  Of  course,"  and  on  my  very  word  she  turned 
and  led  the  way  in. 

The  hall  was  empty.  It  had  nothing  in  it  except  a 
discouraged  oil  lamp  on  a  dirty  kitchen  table.  The 
shadowy  stairs  were  bare.  On  my  left  on  the 
ground  floor  a  woman  with  gray  hair  and  rusty  face 


and  red-rimmed  eyes  shuffled  back  into  the  shadows 
at  my  entry,  a  sort  of  ignoble  Niobe. 

'  That's  my  mother,"  the  grave  child  explained. 
And  to  the  retreating  slatternly  figure  the  child 
called,  "  This  man  has  come  to  help,  Mother,"  as  if 
men  dropped  from  the  sky. 

She  went  up  into  the  shadows  and  I  followed. 
A  flight  of  stairs,  a  long  creaking  landing.  An 
other  flight  of  stairs.  Stumbles.  Another  landing. 
A  stale  aroma  of  cat.  And  a  general  sense  that, 
although  the  staircase  was  well  made  and  the  land 
ings  wide,  there  was  not  one  stick  of  furniture  in 
the  house. 

As  we  approached  the  top  floor  we  met  fresher 
air  and  the  pallid  emanation  of  a  night-light.  A 
figure  stood  waiting  at  the  head  of  the  stairs. 

This  was  a  stout  little  nun,  her  face  framed  in 
creaking  linen,  and  a  great  rustle  of  robes  and  rosary 
beads  whenever  she  moved.  She  began  a  sharp 
whisper  the  minute  we  climbed  to  the  landing. 

"  He's  awake.  He's  out  of  his  head.  I'm  glad 
you've  come.  Now,  child,  be  off  to  bed  with  you, 
like  a  good  girl.  This  way,  if  you  please." 

The  child's  vast  eyes  accepted  me.  "  I'll  go  to 
Mother,"  she  said,  and  she  receded  downstairs. 
The  nun  entered  an  open  door  to  the  right,  and 
again  I  meekly  followed. 

It  was  a  room  out  of  the  fables.  There  was  a 
tall  fireplace  facing  the  door,  with  a  slat  of  packing- 
case  burning  in  it  as  well  as  the  wind  would  permit, 
and  a  solitary  candle  glimmering  in  a  bottle,  set  on 
the  table  at  the  head  of  the  bed.  Its  uncertain 
light  fell  on  the  tousled  hair  of  a  once  kempt  human 
being,  now  evidently  a  semi-maniac  staring  at  pres- 

[    12    ] 


ences  in  the  room.  Down  the  chimney  the  wind 
came  bluffing  at  intervals,  and  the  one  high  window 
querulously  rattled.  The  center  of  the  room  was 
the  sick  man's  burning  eyes. 

I  walked  through  his  view  and  he  did  not  see 
me.  The  nun  and  myself  stood  watching  him  from 
the  head  of  the  bed. 

"  Oh,  he's  awful  bad,  you  have  no  idea  how  bad 
he  is;  I'm  afraid  for  him;  I  am  indeed.  What  am 
I  to  call  you,  Mister?  Here,  take  this  chair." 

Before  I  answered  her  she  continued,  in  a  whis 
per  that  slid  along  from  one  s  to  the  next.  "  They 
said  the  doctor  would  be  here  at  seven  and  it's 
nearly  twelve  as  it  is.  He's  not  coming.  I  wish 
he  was  here." 

The  sick  man  seemed  to  see  us.  "  That's  right 
now,"  he  said,  whistling  his  breath.  "  Bring  me 
my  clothes,  I  want  to  go  home." 

The  nun  laid  her  arm  on  him.  "  Lean  back  now, 
dear,  and  it'll  be  all  right,  I'm  telling  you."  And 
she  gently  but  ineffectually  tried  to  press  him  down. 

The  sick  man  turned  his  face  on  her,  into  the 
candlelight.  He  was  long  unshaved,  but  the  two 
things  that  struck  me  most,  after  the  crop  of  gray 
bristle,  were  the  dry  cavern  of  his  mouth  and  the 
scalding  intensity  of  his  eyes.  I  was  terrified  lest 
those  eyes  should  alight  on  me,  and  yet  I  gazed 
hard  at  him.  His  lips  were  flaked  with  yellow 
scales,  and  dry  mucus  was  in  strings  at  the  corners 
of  his  mouth.  His  night-shirt  gaped  open,  show 
ing  a  very  hairy  black  chest.  He  seemed  a  shrunken 
man,  not  a  very  tall  man,  but  his  shoulders  were 
broad  and  his  chin  very  square.  To  support  his 
chin  seemed  the  great  effort  of  his  jaws.  It  fell 


open  on  him,  giving  him  a  vacant  foolish  expression, 
with  his  teeth  so  black  and  irregular,  and  he  tried 
his  best  to  clamp  his  teeth  tight.  The  working 
of  his  jaws,  however,  scarcely  interfered  with  his 
whistling  breath  or  his  gasping  words. 

"  They  will  be  at  the  back  door,  I  say.  God!  " 
a  feeble  scream  and  whimper.  "  Bring  me  my 
clothes.  You're  hiding  them  on  me.  Oh,  why  are 
you  hiding  them  on  me?  Can't  you  give  me  my 
clothes?" 

1  You're  home  now,  dear.  You're  home  now," 
the  nurse  assured  him.  "  Isn't  that  your  own  clock 
on  the  mantel?  Lie  down  now  and  I'll  make  you 
a  comfortable  drink  and  put  you  to  sleep." 

"  Boy,  fetch  me  my  coat." 

"  Don't  mind  him,"  the  nun  turned  to  me,  "  but 
do  you  cover  his  feet." 

His  feet  had  lost  the  gray  blanket.  They  stared 
blankly  up  from  the  end  of  the  bed.  I  covered 
them  snugly,  glad  to  have  something  to  do. 

:<  It's  all  the  whisky  in  him,"  the  nun  whispered 
when  at  last  he  went  limp  and  lay  down.  "  It's  got 
to  his  brain.  I  thought  he  was  over  the  pneumonia, 
but  that  whisky  has  him  saturated.  The  poor 
thing!  The  poor  thing!" 

*  Well,  I  must  be  going  now,"  the  sick  man  ejacu 
lated,  and  with  one  twist  of  his  body  he  was  out  of 
bed. 

"  Oh,  keep  yourself  covered,  for  the  love  of 
God!"  The  poor  nun  ran  after  him  with  the 
blanket  as  his  old  flannel  night  shirt  fluttered  up 
his  legs. 

He  staggered  up  to  me  fiercely,  and  his  eyes 
razed  my  face. 

[  Hi 


"  Fiddle  your  grandmother,"  he  muttered,  "  I'm 
off  home,  I  tell  you." 

"  You  can't  leave  the  room;  it's  better  for  you  to 
go  back  to  bed,"  and  I  held  him  round  with  my  arms. 

"  See  here,  you,"  his  yellow  cheeks  reddened  with 
his  passionate  effort,  "  you  can't  hold  me  a  prisoner 
any  longer.  Oh,  Barrett,  Barrett,  what  are  you  do 
ing  to  me  to  destroy  me?  " 

I  knew  no  Barrett,  but  the  poor  creature  was 
shivering  with  anguish  and  cold.  I  put  my  arms 
around  him  and  tried  to  move  him  out  of  the 
draught  of  the  door.  His  thin  arms  closed  on  me 
at  the  first  hint  of  force,  and  he  clenched  with  fever 
ish  vigor.  I  could  feel  his  frail  bones  against  me, 
his  bare  ribs,  his  wild  thumping  heart. 

"  You  can't,  you  can't.  You  can't  keep  me 
prisoner.  ..." 

He  struggled,  his  heart  thumping  me.  Then  in 
one  instant  he  went  slack. 

We  lifted  him  to  the  bed,  and  I  felt  under  his 
shirt  for  the  flutter  of  his  heart.  His  mouth  had 
dropped  open,  his  eyes  were  like  a  dead  bird's. 

The  little  nun  began,  "  Jesus,  Mary  and  Joseph," 
and  other  holy  words,  while  I  groped  helplessly 
over  this  fragile  burned-out  frame.  Then  I  remem 
bered  and  I  stumbled  wild-minded  to  find  that  woman 
downstairs. 

I  went  headlong  through  the  darkness.  At  my 
knock  the  door  opened,  as  if  by  an  unseen  hand, 
and  I  saw,  completely  dressed,  the  pale  little  girl, 
with  her  grave  eyes. 

"Your  mother?"  I  asked. 

The  child  stopped  me  sharply,  "  Is  Father 
worse?  " 

[  15  ] 


"He's  worse,"  I  answered  feebly.  'You'd 
better  — " 

The  child  was  brushed  aside  by  her  mother,  who 
had  stumbled  forward  from  inside.  She  looked  at 
me  vaguely. 

The  girl  turned  on  her  mother.  "  I'm  going  up 
to  Father.  Go  inside." 

The  woman's  will  flickered  and  then  expired. 
She  pulled  the  door  back  upon  herself,  shutting  us 
into  the  hall.  The  child  led  and  I  followed  back 
upstairs. 


[  16] 


BILLY  SUNDAY,  SALESMAN 


BEFORE  I  heard  Billy  Sunday  in  Philadelphia 
I  had  formed  a  conception  of  him  from  the  news 
papers.  First  of  all,  he  was  a  baseball  player  be 
come  revivalist.  I  imagined  him  as  a  ranting, 
screaming  vulgarian,  a  mob  orator  who  lashed  him 
self  and  his  audience  into  an  ecstasy  of  cheap  re 
ligious  fervor,  a  sensationalist  whose  sermons  were 
fables  in  slang.  I  thought  of  him  as  vividly,  tor- 
rentially  abusive,  and  I  thought  of  his  revival  as  an 
orgy  in  which  hundreds  of  sinners  ended  by  stream 
ing  in  full  view  to  the  public  mourners'  bench. 
With  the  penitents  I  associated  the  broken  humanity 
of  Magdalen,  disheveled,  tearful,  prostrate,  on  her 
knees  to  the  Lord.  I  thought  of  Billy  Sunday  pre 
siding  over  a  meeting  that  was  tossed  like  trees  in 
a  storm. 

However  this  preconception  was  formed,  it  at 
least  had  the  merit  of  consistency.  It  was,  that  is 
to  say,  consistently  inaccurate  in  every  particular. 

Consider,  in  the  first  place,  the  orderliness  of  his 
specially  constructed  Tabernacle.  Built  like  a  giant 
greenhouse  in  a  single  story,  it  covers  an  immense 
area  and  seats  fifteen  thousand  human  beings. 
Lighted  at  night  by  electricity  as  if  by  sunshine,  the 
floor  is  a  vast  garden  of  human  faces,  all  turned 

[  17  ] 


to  the  small  platform  on  which  the  sloping  tiers 
from  behind  converge.  Around  this  auditorium, 
with  its  forest  of  light  wooden  pillars  and  braces, 
runs  a  glass-inclosed  alley,  and  standing  outside  in 
the  alley  throng  the  spectators  for  whom  there  are 
no  seats.  Except  for  the  quiet  ushers,  the  silent 
sawdust  aisles  are  kept  free.  Through  police- 
guarded  doors  a  thin  trickle  fills  up  the  last  avail 
able  seats,  and  this  business  is  dispatched  with  little 
commotion.  Fully  as  many  people  wait  to  hear 
this  single  diminutive  speaker  as  attend  a  national 
political  convention.  In  many  ways  the  crowd  sug 
gests  a  national  convention;  but  both  men  and  women 
are  hatless,  and  their  attentiveness  is  exemplary. 

It  is,  if  the  phrase  is  permitted,  conspicuously 
a  middle-class  crowd.  It  is  the  crowd  that  wears 
Cluett-Peabody  collars,  that  reads  the  Ladies'  Home 
Journal  and  the  Saturday  Evening  Post.  It  is  the 
crowd  for  whom  the  nickel  was  especially  coined, 
the  nickel  that  pays  carfare,  that  fits  in  a  telephone 
slot,  that  buys  a  cup  of  coffee  or  a  piece  of  pie, 
that  purchases  a  shoe-shine,  that  pays  for  a  soda, 
that  gets  a  stick  of  Hershey's  chocolate,  that  made 
Woolworth  a  millionaire,  that  is  spent  for  chewing- 
gum  or  for  a  glass  of  beer.  In  that  crowd  are  men 
and  women  from  every  sect  and  every  political  party, 
ranging  in  color  from  the  pink  of  the  factory  super 
intendent's  bald  head  to  the  ebony  of  the  discreetly 
dressed  negro  laundress.  A  small  proportion  of 
professional  men  and  a  small  proportion  of  ragged 
labor  is  to  be  discerned,  but  the  general  tone  is 
simple,  common-sense,  practical,  domestic  America. 
Numbers  of  young  girls  who  might  equally  well  be 
at  the  movies  are  to  be  seen,  raw-boned  boys  not 

[  18  ] 


long  from  the  country,  angular  home-keeping  virgins 
of  the  sort  that  belong  to  sewing  circles,  neat  young 
men  who  suggest  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  iron-gray  mothers 
who  recall  the  numbered  side-streets  in  Harlem  or 
Brooklyn  or  Chicago  West  Side  and  who  bring  to 
mind  asthma  and  the  price  of  eggs,  self-conscious 
young  clerks  who  are  half  curious  and  partly  starved 
for  emotion,  men  over  forty  with  prominent  Adam's 
apple  and  the  thin,  strained  look  of  lives  fairly  care 
worn  and  dutiful,  citizens  of  the  kind  that  with  all 
their  heterogeneousness  give  to  a  jury  its  oddly 
characteristic  effect,  fattish  men  who  might  be  small 
shopkeepers  with  a  single  employee,  the  single  em 
ployee  himself,  the  pretty  girl  who  thinks  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Rhodeheaver  so  handsome,  the  prosaic  girl 
whose  chief  perception  is  that  Mr.  Sunday  is  so 
hoarse,  the  nervously  facetious  youths  who  won't 
be  swayed,  the  sedentary  "  providers  "  who  cannot 
open  their  ears  without  dropping  their  jaws.  A 
collection  of  decidedly  stable,  normal,  and  one  may 
crudely  say  "  average "  mortals,  some  of  them 
destined  to  catch  religion,  more  of  them  destined 
to  catch  an  impression,  and  a  few  of  them,  sitting 
near  the  entrances,  destined  resentfully  to  catch  a 
cold. 

Very  simple  and  pleasant  is  the  beginning.  Mr. 
Sunday's  small  platform  is  a  bower  of  lovely 
bouquets,  and  the  first  business  is  the  acknowledg 
ment  of  these  offerings.  As  a  means  of  predis 
posing  the  audience  in  Mr.  Sunday's  favor  nothing 
could  be  more  genial.  In  the  body  of  the  hall  are 
seated  the  sponsors  of  these  gifts,  and  as  each  tribute 
is  presented  to  view,  Mr.  Rhodeheaver's  powerful, 
commonplace  voice  invites  them  to  recognition : 

[   19  ] 


"  Is  the  Pittsburgh  Plate  Glass  Company  here?" 
All  eyes  turn  to  a  little  patch  of  upstanding  brethren. 
"  Fine,  fine.  We're  glad  to  see  yeh  here.  We're 
glad  to  welcome  yeh.  And  what  hymn  would  you 
like  to  have?"  In  loud  concert  the  Pittsburgh 
Plate  Glass  Co.  delegation  shout:  "  Number  forty- 
nine  !  "  Mr.  Rhodeheaver  humorously  parodies  the 
shout:  "  Number  forty-nine!  It's  a  good  'un  too. 
Thank  yeh,  we're  glad  to  have  yeh  here."  Not  only 
immense  bouquets,  but  gold  pieces,  boxes  of  hand 
kerchiefs,  long  mirrors,  all  sorts  of  presents,  mainly 
from  big  corporations  or  their  employees,  are  on 
the  tight  platform.  One  present  came  from  a  mill, 
a  box  of  towels,  and  with  it  not  only  a  warm,  manly 
letter  asking  Mr.  Sunday  to  accept  "  the  product 
of  our  industry,"  but  a  little  poetic  tribute,  express 
ing  the  hope  that  after  his  strenuous  sermon  Mr. 
Sunday  might  have  a  good  bath  and  take  comfort 
in  the  use  of  the  towels.  Every  one  laughed  and 
liked  it,  and  gazed  amiably  at  the  towels. 

The  hymns  were  disappointing.  If  fifteen  thou 
sand  people  had  really  joined  in  them  the  effect 
would  have  been  stupendous.  As  it  was,  they  were 
thrilling,  but  not  completely.  The  audience  was 
not  half  abandoned  enough. 

Then,  after  a  collection  had  been  taken  up  for  a 
local  charity,  Mr.  Sunday  began  with  a  prayer.  A 
compact  figure  in  an  ordinary  black  business  suit, 
it  was  instantly  apparent  from  his  nerveless  voice 
that,  for  all  his  athleticism,  he  was  tired  to  the 
bone.  He  is  fifty-three  years  old  and  for  nine 
weeks  he  had  been  delivering  about  fifteen  extremely 
intense  sermons  a  week.  His  opening  was  almost 

[    20] 


adramatic.  It  had  the  conservatism  of  fatigue, 
and  it  was  only  his  evident  self-possession  that  can 
celed  the  fear  he  would  fizzle. 

The  two  men  whom  Sunday  most  recalled  to  me 
at  first  were  Elbert  Hubbard  and  George  M.  Cohan. 
In  his  mental  caliber  and  his  pungent  philistinism 
of  expression  he  reminded  me  of  Hubbard,  but  in 
his  physical  attitude  there  was  nothing  of  that 
greasy  orator.  He  was  trim  and  clean-cut  and 
swift.  He  was  like  a  quintessentially  slick  salesman 
of  his  particular  line  of  wares. 

Accompanying  one  of  the  presents  there  had  been 
a  letter  referring  to  Billy  Sunday's  great  work,  "  the 
moral  uplift  so  essential  to  the  business  and  com 
mercial  supremacy  of  this  city  and  this  country." 
As  he  developed  his  homely  moral  sermon  for  his 
attentive  middle-class  congregation,  this  gave  the 
clew  to  his  appeal.  It  did  not  seem  to  me  that  he 
had  one  touch  of  divine  poetry.  He  humored  and 
argued  and  smote  for  Christ  as  a  commodity  that 
would  satisfy  an  enormous  acknowledged  gap  in  his 
auditors'  lives.  He  was  "  putting  over "  Christ. 
In  awakening  all  the  early  memories  of  maternal  ad 
monition  and  counsel,  the  consciousness  of  unful 
filled  desires,  of  neglected  ideals,  the  ache  for  sym 
pathy  and  understanding,  he  seemed  like  an  insur 
ance  agent  making  a  text  of  "  over  the  hill  to  the 
poorhouse."  He  had  at  his  finger  tips  all  the  sell 
ing  points  of  Christ.  He  gave  to  sin  and  salvation 
a  practical  connotation.  But  while  his  words  and 
actions  apparently  fascinated  his  audience,  while 
they  laughed  eagerly  when  he  scored,  and  clapped 
him  warmly  very  often,  to  me  he  appealed  no  more 

[  21  ] 


than  an  ingenious  electric  advertisement,  a  bottle 
picked  out  against  the  darkness  pouring  out  a  foam 
ing  glass  of  beer. 

And  yet  his  heart  seemed  to  be  in  it,  as  a  sales 
man's  heart  has  to  be  in  it.  Speaking  the  language 
of  business  enterprise,  the  language  with  which  the 
great  majority  were  familiar,  using  his  physical 
antics  merely  as  a  device  for  clinching  the  story 
home,  he  gave  to  religion  a  great  human  pertinence, 
and  he  made  the  affirmation  of  faith  seem  creditable 
and  easy.  And  he  defined  his  own  object  so  that 
a  child  could  understand.  He  was  a  recruiting 
officer,  not  a  drill  sergeant.  He  spoke  for  faith 
in  Christ ;  he  left  the  rest  to  the  clergy.  And  to  the 
clergy  he  said:  "  If  you  are  too  lazy  to  take  care 
of  the  baby  after  it  is  born,  don't  blame  the  doctor." 

It  was  in  his  platform  manners  that  Sunday  re 
called  George  M.  Cohan.  When  you  hear  that  he 
goes  through  all  the  gyrations  and  gesticulations  of 
baseball,  you  think  of  a  yahoo,  but  in  practice  he  is 
not  wild.  Needing  to  arrest  the  attention  of  an 
incredibly  large  number  of  people,  he  adopts  various 
evolutions  that  have  a  genuine  emphatic  value.  It 
is  a  physical  language  with  which  the  vast  majority 
have  friendly  heroic  associations,  and  for  them, 
spoken  so  featly  and  gracefully,  it  works.  Grasp 
ing  the  edge  of  the  platform  table  as  if  about  to 
spring  like  a  tiger  into  the  auditorium,  Sunday  gives 
to  his  words  a  drive  that  makes  you  tense  in  your 
seat.  Whipping  like  a  flash  from  one  side  of  the 
table  to  the  other,  he  makes  your  mind  keep  unison 
with  his  body.  He  keys  you  to  the  pitch  that  the 
star  baseball  player  keys  you,  and  although  you 
stiffen  when  he  flings  out  the  name  of  Christ  as  if 

[    22    ] 


he  were  sending  a  spitball  right  into  your  teeth,  you 
realize  it  is  only  an  odd,  apt,  popular  conventional 
ization  of  the  ordinary  rhetorical  gesture.  Call  it 
his  bag  of  tricks,  deem  it  incongruous  and  stagey, 
but  if  Our  Lady's  Juggler  is  romantic  in  grand  opera, 
he  is  not  a  whit  more  romantic  than  this  athlete  who 
has  adapted  beautiful  movements  to  an  emphasis  of 
convictions  to  which  the  audience  nods  assent. 

The  dissuading  devil  was  conjured  by  Sunday  in 
his  peroration,  and  then  he  ended  by  thanking  God 
for  sending  him  his  great  opportunity,  his  vast  au 
dience,  his  bouquets  and  his  towels.  When  he  fin 
ished,  several  hundred  persons  trailed  forward  to 
shake  hands  and  confess  their  faith  —  bringing  the 
total  of  "  penitents  "  up  to  35,135. 

Bending  with  a  smile  to  these  men  and  women 
who  intend  to  live  in  the  faith  of  Christ,  Billy 
Sunday  gives  a  last  impression  of  kindliness,  sin 
cerity,  tired  zeal.  And  various  factory  superin 
tendents  and  employers  mingle  benignly  around, 
glad  of  a  religion  that  puts  on  an  aching  social 
system  such  a  hot  mustard  plaster. 

II 

Oyster  soup  is  a  standard  item  in  the  money- 
making  church  supper.  The  orphan  oyster  search 
ing  vainly  for  a  playmate  in  an  ocean  of  church 
soup  is  a  favorite  object  of  Billy  Sunday's  pity.  He 
loves  to  caricature  the  struggling  church,  with  its 
time-serving,  societyfied,  tea-drinking,  smirking 
preachers.  "  The  more  oyster  soup  it  takes  to  run 
a  church,"  he  shouts  sarcastically,  "  the  faster  it 
runs  to  the  devil." 

[  23  ] 


An  attitude  so  scornful  as  this  may  seem  highly 
unconventional  to  the  outsider.  It  leads  him  to 
think  that  Billy  Sunday  is  a  radical.  The  agility 
with  which  the  Rev.  Billy  climbs  to  the  top  of  his 
pulpit  and  then  pops  to  the  platform  on  all  fours 
suggests  a  corresponding  mental  agility.  He  must 
be  a  dangerous  element  in  the  church,  the  outsider 
imagines;  he  must  be  a  religious  revolutionary. 
And  then  the  outsider  beholds  John  Wanamaker  or 
John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  on  the  platform  along 
side  the  revivalist  —  pillars  of  society,  prosperous 
and  respectable  gentlemen  who  instinctively  know 
their  business. 

Fond  as  his  friends  are  of  comparing  Billy  Sun 
day  to  Martin  Luther  or  John  the  Baptist,  none 
of  them  pushes  the  comparison  on  the  lines  of  radi 
calism,  and  Sunday  himself  waives  the  claim  to  being 
considered  revolutionary.  "  I  drive  the  same  kind 
of  nails  all  orthodox  preachers  do,"  he  says  in  one  of 
his  sermons.  "  The  only  difference  is  that  they  use 
a  tack  hammer  and  I  use  a  sledge."  No  one  sup 
poses  that  Martin  Luther  could  have  said  this. 
Sledge-hammer  orthodoxy  was  not  exactly  the  dis 
tinguishing  characteristic  of  Martin  Luther.  The 
conservatism  of  Billy  Sunday's  message  is  the  first 
fact  about  him.  Where  he  differs  from  the  ortho 
dox  preacher  is  not  in  his  soul  but  in  his  resolution. 
He  has  the  mind  of  Martin  Tupper  rather  than  of 
Martin  Luther,  but  it  is  combined  with  that  compe 
tent  American  aggressiveness  which  one  finds  in  a 
large  way  in  George  M.  Cohan,  Theodore  Roose 
velt,  even  Ty  Cobb.  Theology  does  not  interest 
Billy  Sunday.  He  compares  it  to  ping-pong  and 
compares  himself  to  a  jack-rabbit  and  says  he  knows 

[  24  ] 


as  little  about  theology  as  a  jack-rabbit  knows  about 
ping-pong.  What  he  cares  about  is  religious  re 
vival.  He  knows  the  church  is  in  bitter  need  of  re 
vival.  He  is  out  to  administer  digitalis,  in  his  own 
phrase,  instead  of  oyster  soup. 

For  many  years  the  church  has  been  waning,  and 
Billy  Sunday  scorns  the  effeminate,  lily-handed  ef 
forts  at  resuscitation  that  the  churchmen  have  em 
ployed.  To  put  pepperino  into  a  religious  cam 
paign,  to  make  Christianity  hum,  requires  more 
than  cushioned  pews,  extra  music,  coffee  and 
macaroons.  Had  Billy  Sunday  been  in  the  regular 
theatrical  business  he  would  not  have  fussed  with 
a  little  independent  theatre.  He  would  have  con 
ducted  a  Hippodrome.  To  rival  the  profane 
world's  attractions  he  sees  no  reason  for  rejecting 
the  profane  world's  methods.  So  tremendous  an 
object  as  curing  an  institution's  pernicious  anaemia 
justifies  the  most  violent,  outrageous  experiment. 

If  Jesus  Christ  were  a  new  automobile  or  an  en 
cyclopaedia  or  a  biscuit,  Billy  Sunday  would  have 
varied  the  method  he  has  employed  in  putting  Him 
over,  but  he  would  not  have  varied  the  spirit  of 
his  revival-enterprise  in  any  essential  particular. 
His  object,  as  he  sees  it,  is  to  sell  Christ.  It  is  an 
old  story  that  from  its  economic  organization  so 
ciety  takes  its  complexion.  The  Sunday  revival 
takes  its  complexion  from  business  enterprise  with 
out  a  single  serious  change.  There  is  one  great 
argument  running  all  through  Billy  Sunday's  ser 
mons  —  the  argument  that  salvation  will  prove  a 
profitable  investment  —  but  much  more  clearly  de 
rived  from  business  than  the  ethics  preached  by 
Billy  Sunday  is  the  method  he  has  devised  for  pro- 

[  25  ] 


moting  Jesus  Christ.  Even  the  quarrel  between 
"  Ma  "  Sunday  and  the  man  who  has  lost  the  post 
card  concession  is  an  illustration  of  the  far-reach 
ing  efficiency  of  the  system.  The  point  is  not  that 
money  is  being  made  out  of  the  system.  "  An  effort 
to  corrupt  Billy  Sunday,"  to  use  a  paraphrase, 
"  would  be  a  work  of  supererogation,  besides  being 
immoral."  If  Billy  Sunday  has  a  large  income, 
$75,000  or  $100,000  a  year,  it  is  not  because  he 
is  mercenary.  It  is  only  because  a  large  income  is 
part  of  the  natural  fruits  of  his  promoting  ability. 
Left  to  himself,  it  is  quite  unlikely  that  Billy  Sunday 
would  care  a  straw  about  his  income,  beyond  enough 
to  live  well  and  to  satisfy  his  vanity  about  clothes. 
It  is  Mrs.  Sunday  who  sees  to  it  that  her  promoter- 
husband  is  not  left  penniless  by  those  Christian 
business  men  who  so  delightedly  utilize  his  services. 
The  backbone  of  Billy  Sunday's  success  is  organ 
ization.  When  organization  has  delivered  the 
crowd,  Billy  is  ready  to  sweat  for  it  and  spit  for  it 
and  war-whoop  for  it  and  dive  for  base  before  the 
devil  can  reach  him.  He  is  ready  to  have  "  Rody  " 
come  on  the  programme  with  his  slide-trombone  and 
to  have  any  volunteer  who  wishes  to  do  it  hit  the 
sawdust-trail.  But  he  does  not  let  his  success  de 
pend  on  any  programme.  His  audiences  are,  in 
great  measure,  contracted  for  in  advance.  It  is  in 
grasping  the  necessity  for  this  kind  of  prepared 
ness,  in  taking  from  the  business  world  its  lessons 
as  to  canvassing  and  advertising  and  standardizing 
the  goods,  that  Billy  can  afford  to  jeer  at  oyster 
soup.  As  his  authorized  biographer  complacently 
says,  "  John  the  Baptist  was  only  a  voice :  but  Billy 
Sunday  is  a  voice,  plus  a  bewildering  array  of  com- 

[  26  ] 


mittees  and  assistants  and  organized  machinery.  He 
has  committees  galore  to  cooperate  in  his  work:  a 
drilled  Army  of  the  Lord.  In  the  list  of  Scranton 
workers  that  is  before  me  I  see  tabulated  an  execu 
tive  committee,  the  directors,  a  prayer-meeting  com 
mittee,  an  entertainment  committee,  an  usher  com 
mittee,  a  dinner  committee,  a  business  women's 
committee,  a  building  committee,  a  nursery  com 
mittee,  a  personal  worker's  committee,  a  decorating 
committee,  a  shop-meetings  committee  —  and  then 
a  whole  list  of  churches  and  religious  organizations 
in  the  city  as  ex  officio  workers!  "  In  New  York 
on  April  9th  there  was  a  private  meeting  of  7,000 
personal  workers,  "  another  step  in  the  direction  of 
greasing  the  campaign." 

Unless  Billy  Sunday  had  some  skill  as  a  per 
former  he  naturally  could  not  hold  his  place  as  a 
revivalist.  His  success  consists  largely,  however, 
in  the  legendary  character  that  has  been  given  him 
by  all  the  agencies  that  seek  to  promote  this  des 
perate  revival  of  orthodox  religion.  His  acrobatic 
stunts  on  the  platform  are  sufficiently  shocking  to 
make  good  publicity.  His  much-advertised  slang, 
repeated  over  and  over,  has  a  similar  sensational 
value.  But  the  main  point  about  him  is  the  drama 
tization  of  his  own  personality.  His  virility  is  per 
haps  his  chief  stock-in-trade.  No  one,  not  Mr. 
Roosevelt  himself,  has  insisted  so  much  on  his  per 
sonal  militant  masculinity.  Although  well  over 
fifty,  his  youthful  prowess  as  a  baseball-player  is 
still  a  headline-item  in  his  story,  and  every  sermon 
he  preaches  gives  him  a  chance  to  prove  he  is 
physically  fit.  In  addition  to  this  heroic  character 
istic  there  is  his  fame  as  a  self-made  man.  He  is 

[  27  ] 


a  plain  man  of  the  people,  as  he  never  fails  to 
insist.  He  carries  "  the  malodors  of  the  barnyard  " 
with  him.  But  he  has  succeeded.  The  cost  of  his 
special  tabernacle  is  one  of  his  big  distinctions. 
The  size  of  his  collections  is  another.  His  personal 
fortune,  in  spite  of  all  criticism,  is  a  third.  Besides 
these  heroic  attributes  of  strength  and  wealth  there 
is  his  melodramatic  simplicity  of  mind.  All  of  his 
sermons  are  "  canned "  and  a  great  deal  of  the 
material  in  them  is  borrowed,  but  he  manages  to 
deliver  his  message  straight  from  the  shoulder,  as 
if  it  were  his  own.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  his 
shouting,  his  slang,  his  familiarity  with  Jesus,  his 
buttonholing  old  God,  his  slang-version  of  the  Bible, 
do  offend  large  numbers  of  people.  They  arrest 
attention  so  successfully,  even  in  these  cases,  that 
they  turn  out  to  be  well  advised.  There  is  nothing 
spontaneous  about  these  antics.  They  are  switched 
on  at  the  beginning  of  a  revival  and  switched  off  as 
it  succeeds.  They  are  Sunday's  native  way  of  light 
ing  up  the  strait  and  narrow  path  with  wriggling 
electric  signs. 

Billy  Sunday  has  too  much  energy  to  stick  com 
pletely  fast  in  the  mud  of  conservatism.  He  is 
capable  of  advocating  sex  instruction  for  the  young, 
for  example,  and  he  permits  himself  the  wild  radi 
calism  of  woman  suffrage.  But  as  regards  vested 
interests  and  patriotism  and  war  he  is  a  conserva 
tive,  practically  a  troglodyte.  What  he  attacks 
with  fervor  are  the  delinquents  in  ordinary  conduct, 
especially  the  people  who  lack  self-control. 
"  Booze-hoisters "  and  card-players  and  tango- 
dancers  and  cigarette-smokers  are  his  pet  abomina 
tions  —  genuine  abominations.  Profanity,  strange 

[  28  ] 


to  say,  is  another  evil  that  he  fights  with  fire. 
Honesty,  sobriety,  chastity  —  these  are  virtues  that 
he  exalts,  illustrating  the  horror  of  failing  in  them 
by  means  of  innumerable  chromatic  anecdotes. 
The  devil  he  constantly  attacks,  though  never  with 
real  solemnity.  '*  The  devil  has  been  practicing  for 
six  thousand  years  and  he  has  never  had  appendicitis, 
rheumatism  or  tonsilitis.  If  you  get  to  playing  tag 
with  the  devil  he  will  beat  you  every  chip."  It  is 
more  for  spice  and  snap  that  he  introduces  the  devil 
than  to  terrify  his  public.  The  Bible  is  his  serious 
theme,  and  he  feels  about  it  almost  the  way  Martin 
Tupper  did: 

The  dear  old  Family  Bible  should  be  still  our  champion 

volume, 
The    Medo-Persic    law    to    us,    the    standard    of    our 

Rights  .  .  . 

It  is  a  joy,  an  honor,  yea  a  wisdom,  to  declare 
A  boundless,  an  infantile  faith  in  our  dear  English  Bible! 
The  garden,  and  the  apple,  and  the  serpent,  and  the  ark, 
And  every  word  in  every  verse,  and  in  its  literal  meaning, 
And  histories  and  prophecies  and  miracles  and  visions, 
In  spite  of  learned  unbelief, —  we  hold  it  all  plain  truth: 
Not  blindly,  but  intelligently,  after  search  and  study; 
Hobbes   and    Paine   considered   well,   and   Germany   and 

Colenso  .  .  . 
The  Bible  made  us  what  we  are,  the  mightiest  Christian 

nation  .  .  . 

The  Bible,  standing  in  its  strength  a  pyramid  four-square, 
The  plain  old  English  Bible,  a  gem  with  all  its  flaws  .  .  . 
Is  still  the  heaven-blest  fountain  of  conversion  and  salva 
tion. 

One  of  Billy  Sunday's  boasts  is  that  the  liquor 
interests  hate  him.      "  That  dirty,  stinking  bunch  of 

[  29  ] 


moral  assassins  hires  men  to  sit  in  the  audience  to 
hear  me,  to  write  down  what  I  say  and  then  try 
to  find  some  author  who  said  something  like  it,  and 
accuse  me  of  having  stolen  my  ideas.  I  know  that 
$30,000  was  offered  a  man  in  New  York  City  to 
write  a  series  of  articles  attacking  me.  All  right; 
if  you  know  anything  about  me  that  you  want  to 
publish,  go  to  it.  Everything  they  say  about  me  is 
a  dirty,  stinking,  black-hearted  lie.  The  whole 
thing  is  a  frame-up  from  A  to  Izzard.  I'll  fight 
them  till  hell  freezes  over,  and  then  borrow  a  pair 
of  skates.  By  the  grace  of  God,  I've  helped  to 
make  Colorado  and  Nebraska  and  Iowa  and  Mich 
igan  and  West  Virginia  dry,  and  I  serve  notice  on 
the  dirty  gang  that  I'll  help  to  make  the  whole 
nation  dry."  (New  York  Times,  April  i9th, 
1917.) 

Assuming  these  points  to  be  well  taken,  there  is 
still  great  room  to  doubt  the  deep  religious  effect 
of  a  Billy  Sunday  revival.  Men  like  William  Allen 
White  and  Henry  Allen  have  testified  on  his  behalf 
in  Kansas,  and  he  has  the  undying  gratitude  of  many 
hundred  human  beings  for  moral  stimulus  in  a  time 
of  need.  In  spite  of  the  thousands  who  have  hit  the 
sawdust  trail,  however,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
more  than  a  tiny  proportion  of  his  auditors  are  re 
ligiously  affected  by  him.  The  great  majority  of 
those  who  hit  the  trail  are  people  who  merely  want 
to  shake  his  hand.  Very  few  give  any  signs  of 
seriousness  or  "  conversion."  The  atmosphere  of 
the  tabernacle,  bright  with  electric  light  and  friendly 
with  hymn-singing,  is  not  religiously  inspiring,  and 
in  the  voice  and  manner  of  Billy  Sunday  there  is 
seldom  a  contagious  note.  His  audiences  are  curi- 

[  30  ] 


ous  to  see  him  and  hear  him.  He  is  a  remarkable 
public  entertainer,  and  much  that  he  says  has  keen 
humor  and  verbal  art  and  horse  sense.  But  for  all 
his  militancy,  for  all  his  pugnacious  vociferation,  he 
leaves  an  impression  of  being  at  once  violent  and 
incommunicative,  a  sales  agent  for  Christianity  but 
not  a  guide  or  a  friend. 

Still,  as  between  Billy  Sunday's  gymnastics  and 
the  average  oyster  soup,  Messrs.  Wanamaker  and 
Rockefeller  naturally  put  their  money  on  Sunday. 
Theirs  is  the  world  of  business  enterprise,  of  car 
pets  and  socks,  Socony  and  Nujol,  and  if  Christ 
could  have  been  put  over  in  the  same  way,  by  live- 
wire  salesmanship,  Billy  was  the  man. 


FIFTH  AVENUE  AND  FORTY-SECOND 
STREET 


1  HOUGH  you  do  not  know  it,  I  have  a  soul. 
Behold,  across  the  way,  my  library.  When  the 
night  shrouds  those  lions  and  the  fresh  young  trees 
shake  out  their  greenery  against  the  white  stone 
work,  do  you  not  catch  a  suggestion  of  atmosphere, 
something  of  a  mood?  And  the  black  cliffs  around, 
with  the  janitress  lights  making  jeweled  bars  the 
width  of  them,  are  they  not  monuments?  I  cleave 
brilliantly,  up  and  down  this  dormant  city.  It  is 
for  you,  late  wayfarer.  Pay  no  heed  to  the  plod 
ding  milk-wagon  or  the  hatless  young  maiden  speed 
ing  her  lover's  motor.  Heed  my  long  silences,  my 
slim  tall  darknesses.  My  human  tide  has  ebbed. 
My  buildings  come  about  me  to  muse  and  to  com 
mune.  Receive,  for  once  on  Fifth  Avenue,  the  soul 
that  is  imprisoned  in  my  stone  and  steel." 

It  is  not  for  the  respectable,  this  polite  com 
munication.  Theatre  and  club  and  restaurant  have 
long  since  disgorged  these.  New  York  has  masti 
cated  their  money.  They  have  done  as  they  should 
and  are  restored  uptown.  Even  the  old  news- 
woman,  she  who  had  spent  starving  months  in  the 
Russian  woods,  caught  in  the  first  eddies  of  the  war, 
she  has  tottered  from  her  stand  down  by  the  station. 
The  Hungarian  waiter  in  Childs'  is  still  there,  still 

[  32  ] 


assuaging  the  deep  nocturnal  need  for  buckwheat 
cakes,  but  that  is  off  the  avenue.  It  is  three,  the 
avenue  is  nearly  empty.  It  is  ready  to  disclose  its 
soul. 

But  before  this  subtle  performance  there  is  a  pre 
liminary.  It  is  a  very  self-respecting  avenue  and 
at  three  on  a  pleasant  morning,  when  no  one  is 
around  to  disturb  it,  it  proceeds  to  take  its  bath. 
Perhaps  a  few  motors  go  by  —  a  taxi  rolling  north, 
heavy  with  night  thoughts,  a  tired  white  face  framed 
in  its  black  depth;  or  a  Wanamaker  truck  clanking 
loosely  home  in  the  other  direction,  delivered  of  its 
suburban  chores.  The  Italian  acolytes  are  impar 
tial.  They  spray  the  wheels  of  a  touring  car  with 
gusto,  ignored  by  its  linked  lovers,  or  drive  a  pow 
erful  stream  under  the  hubs  of  a  Nassau  News 
wagon  trundling  to  a  train.  The  avenue  must  be 
refreshed,  the  brave  green  of  the  library  trees  nod 
ding  approval,  the  sparrows  expecting  it.  It  must 
be  prepared  for  the  sun,  under  bold  lamps  and 
timid  stars. 

A  fine  young  morning,  the  watchman  promises. 
A  bit  of  wind  whiffles  the  water  that  is  shot  out  from 
the  white-wing's  hose,  but  it  is  clearing  up  above 
and  looks  well  for  the  day.  The  hour  beckons 
memories  for  the  watchman  —  fine  young  mornings 
he  used  to  have  long  ago,  in  Ireland,  a  boy  on  his 
first  adventure  and  he  driving  with  the  barley  to 
Ross. 

It  is  an  empty  street.  The  hose  is  wheeled  away 
over  the  glistening  asphalt.  The  watchman  disap 
pears  —  he  has  a  cozy  nook  beyond  the  ken  of 
time-clocks.  The  last  human  pigmy  seeks  his  pil 
low,  to  hide  a  diminished  head.  With  man  ac- 

[  33  ] 


counted  for,  night  sighs  its  completion  and  creeps  to 
the  west.  Then,  untrammeled  of  heaven  or  minion, 
the  buildings  have  their  moment.  Each  tower 
stretches  his  proud  height  to  the  morning.  The 
stones  give  out  their  spirit;  their  music  is  unsealed. 


II 

Fifth  Avenue  stands  serene  and  still,  but  it  can 
not  hold  the  virgin  morning  forever.  Its  windows 
may  be  blank,  its  sidewalks  vacant.  Behind  the 
walls  there  is  a  magnet  drawing  back  its  human  life. 

"  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread."  A  saintly 
venerable  horse  seems  to  know  the  injunction. 
Emerging  from  nowhere,  ambling  to  nowhere,  it 
usurps  the  innocent  morning  in  answer  to  the  Lord. 

And  not  by  bread  alone.  There  is  nothing  in  the 
prayer  about  clams,  but  some  one  in  Mount  Vernon 
is  destined  to  have  them  quickly.  Out  of  the  mys 
terious  south,  racing  against  time,  a  little  motor  flits 
onward  with  gaping  barrels  of  clams.  At  a  decent 
interval  comes  a  heavier  load  of  fish.  Great  express 
wagons  follow,  commissarial  giants.  The  honest 
uses  of  Fifth  Avenue  begin. 

Butchers  and  bakers  are  out  before  fine  ladies. 
The  grocer  and  the  greengrocer  are  early  on  their 
rounds.  But  an  empty  American  News  truck  con 
fesses  that  eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  circula 
tion.  Its  gait  is  swifter  than  the  gait  of  milkman 
or  fruit-and-vegetable  man.  Dust  and  dew  are  on 
the  florist's  wheels:  he  has  come  whistling  by  the 
swamps  of  Flushing.  His  flimsy  automobile  runs 
lightly  past  the  juggernauts  that  crush  down. 

[  34  ] 


Uncle  Sam  is  in  haste  at  six  in  the  morning.  His 
trucks  hurl  from  Grand  Central  to  make  the  sub 
stations.  But  his  is  not  the  pride  of  place.  Nor 
is  it  coal  or  farmers'  feed  that  appropriates  the 
middle  of  the  street.  The  noblest  wagons,  a  long 
parade  of  them,  announce  the  greater  glory  of  beer. 
The  temperance  advocate  may  shudder  at  the  dese 
cration  of  the  morning.  He  may  observe  "  Hell 
Gate  Brewery  "  and  nod  his  sickly  nod.  But  there 
is  something  about  this  large  preparedness  for  thirst 
that  stills  the  carping  worm  of  conscience.  It  is 
good  to  see  what  solid,  ample  caravans  are  re 
quired  to  replenish  man  with  beer.  It  is  not  the 
single  glass  that  is  glorious.  It  is  not  even  the 
single  car-load.  It  is  the  steady,  deliberate,  ponder 
ous  procession  that  streams  through  the  early  hours. 
Once  it  seemed  as  if  Percherons  alone  were  worthy 
of  beer-wagons.  It  satisfied  the  faith  that  there 
was  Design  in  creation,  but  the  Percheron  is  not 
needed.  There  is  the  same  institutional  impressive- 
ness  about  a  motor-truck  piled  to  the  sky  with  beer. 


Ill 

"Number,  please?"  She  is  anonymous,  that 
inquirer.  But  behind  her  anonymity  there  is  hu 
manity.  Fifth  Avenue  and  Forty-second  Street 
caught  a  glimpse  of  her  at  six  forty-five  A.  M. 

She  was  up  at  five  in  the  morning.  She  had  a 
pang  as  she  put  on  her  check  suit,  slightly  darker 
than  her  check  coat  lined  with  pink.  Her  little  hat, 
however,  was  smart  and  new.  Her  mother  cooked 
breakfast  while  she  set  the  table.  Then  she  walked 

[  35  ] 


to  the  Third  Avenue  "  L  "  with  her  friend.  They 
got  off  the  express  at  Forty-second  Street,  rode  to 
Fourth  Avenue  on  the  short  spur  line,  and  walked 
along  Forty-second  Street  in  time  for  them  to  do  a 
brief  window-shopping  as  they  passed  the  shirt 
waists  at  Forsythe's.  Her  friend's  bronze  shoes  she 
envied  as  they  crossed  the  little  park  back  of  the 
Library.  On  Sixth  Avenue  they  inspected  the  win 
dow  at  Bernstein's.  A  slight  argument  engrossed 
them.  They  hovered  over  the  window,  chirping  not 
unlike  the  sparrows  in  Bryant  Park.  Then,  in  a 
flurry  of  punctuality,  they  raced  for  the  telephone 
company  to  begin  their  "  Number,  please." 

An  hour  earlier  laborers  with  dinner-pails  had 
crossed  Fifth  Avenue,  and  hatless  Polish  girls  on 
their  way  to  scrub.  By  seven  o'clock  the  negro 
porters  and  laborers  were  giving  way  to  white-collar 
strap-hangers  on  the  elevateds  and  in  the  subway. 
It  was  getting  to  be  the  hour  of  salesmen  and  sales 
girls  and  office-boys  and  shop-subordinates  and 
clerks.  The  girls  back  of  the  scenes  at  the  mil 
liner's,  they  go  up  Fifth  Avenue  at  seven,  to  take 
one  side-street  or  another.  The  girl  who  sells  you 
a  toothbrush  in  the  drug-store  hurries  by  the  shop 
windows,  herself  as  neat  as  a  model.  Is  it  early? 
Myriads  of  men  are  pouring  down  already.  Be 
sides,  "  'S  use  of  kickin'  ?  If  you  don't  like  it,  you 
can  walk  out!  " 

The  night-watchman  is  going  home,  and  an  old  at 
tendant  from  the  Grand  Central.  u  Tired,  Pop?  " 
"  Yeh,  p'tty  tired."  "  What  right  've  you  to  git 
tired  workin'  for  a  big  corporation?"  The  op 
pressed  wage-slave  bellows,  "  Ha,  ha." 

[  36  ] 


IV 

Of  these  things  Fifth  Avenue  .is  innocent  at  five  in 
the  afternoon.  The  diastole  of  travelers  had 
spread  all  morning  from  Grand  Central;  the  systole 
is  active  at  five.  As  the  great  muscle  contracts  in 
the  afternoon,  atoms  are  pulled  frantically  to  the 
suburbs,  tearing  their  way  through  the  weaker 
streams  that  are  drawn  up  by  the  neighboring  shops 
and  clubs  and  bars  and  hotels.  The  Biltmore  and 
Sherry's  and  Delmonico's  and  the  Manhattan  and 
the  Belmont  are  no  longer  columnar  monuments, 
holding  secret  vigil.  They  are  secondary  to  the  hu 
man  floods  which  they  suck  in  and  spray  out.  The 
street  itself  is  lost  to  memory  and  vision.  A  swollen 
stream,  dammed  at  moments  while  chosen  people  are 
permitted  to  walk  dry-shod  across,  bears  on  its  rest 
less  bosom  the  freight  of  curiosity  and  pride  and 
favor.  One  might  fancy,  to  gaze  on  this  mad 
throng  of  motors,  that  a  new  religious  sect  had  con 
quered  the  universe,  worshipers  of  a  machine. 

It  is  the  hour  of  white  gloves  and  delicate  pro 
files,  the  feminine  hour.  A  little  later  there  will  be 
more  leaves  than  blossoms,  the  men  coming  from 
work  giving  a  duller  tone.  But  one  is  permitted  to 
believe  for  this  period  that  Fifth  Avenue  has  a  per 
sonality,  parti-colored,  decorative,  flashing,  frivo 
lous,  composed  of  many  styles  and  many  types. 
The  working  world  intersects  it  rudely  at  Forty- 
second  Street,  but  scarcely  infiltrates  it.  A  qualifi 
cation  distinguishes  those  who  turn  up  and  down  the 
Avenue.  It  is  not  leisure  that  distinguishes  them, 
or  money,  but  their  sense  that  there  is  romance  in 

[  37  ] 


the  appearance  of  money  and  leisure.  Many  of  the 
white  gloves  are  cotton.  Many  of  the  gloves  are 
not  white.  But  it  is  May-time,  the  afternoon,  Fifth 
Avenue.  One  may  pretend  the  world  is  gay. 

They  seem  chaotic  and  impulsive,  these  crowds 
on  Fifth  Avenue.  They  move  as  by  personal  will. 
But  dawn  and  sunset,  morning  and  evening,  com 
mon  attractions  govern  them.  There  is  a  rhythm 
in  these  human  tides. 


For  eighty  years  Henri  Fabre  watched  the  in 
sects.  He  stayed  with  his  friend  the  spider  the 
round  of  the  clock.  Time,  that  reveals  the  spider, 
is  also  eloquent  of  man  in  his  city.  Time  is  the 
scene-shifter  and  the  detective.  Some  day  we  should 
pitch  a  metropolitan  observatory  at  the  corner  of 
Fifth  Avenue  and  Forty-second  Street, —  some  day, 
if  we  can  find  the  time. 


AS  AN  ALIEN  FEELS 

1  WENTY-FIVE  years  ago  I  knew  but  dimly  that 
the  United  States  existed.  My  first  dream  of  it 
came,  as  well  as  I  remember,  from  the  strange  gay 
flag  that  blew  above  a  circus  tent  on  the  Fair  Green. 
It  was  a  Wild  West  Show,  and  for  years  I  asso 
ciated  America  with  the  intoxication  of  the  circus 
and,  for  no  reason,  with  the  tang  of  oranges. 
'  Two  a  penny,  two  a  penny,  large  penny  oranges ! 
Buy  away  an'  ate  away,  large  penny  oranges!" 
They  were  oranges  from  Seville  then,  but  the  odor 
of  them  and  the  fumes  of  circus  excitement  gave  me 
a  first  gay  ribald  sense  of  the  United  States. 

The  next  allied  sense  was  gathered  from  a  scalla- 
wag  uncle.  He  had  sought  his  fortune  in  America 
—  sought  it,  as  I  infer  now,  on  the  rear  end  of  a 
horse-car.  When  he  came  home  he  was  full  of  odd 
and  delicious  oaths.  "  Gosh  hell  hang  it  "  was  his 
chief  touch  of  American  culture.  He  was  a 
"  Yank "  in  local  parlance,  a  frequently  drunken 
Yank.  His  fine  drooping  mustache  too  often 
drooped  with  porter.  Once,  a  boy  of  nine,  I 
steadied  him  home  under  the  October  stars  and  ab 
sorbed  a  long  alcoholic  reverie  on  the  Horseshoe 
Falls.  As  we  slept  together  that  night  in  the  rat- 
pattering  loft,  and  as  he  absently  appropriated  all 
the  horse-blanket,  I  had  plenty  of  chance  to  shiver 
over  the  wonderments  of  the  Horseshoe  Falls. 

This,  with  an  instilled  idea  that  America  and 
[  39  ] 


America  alone  could  offer  "  work,"  foreshadowed 
the  American  landscape.  It  is  the  bald  hope  of 
work  that  finally  magnetizes  us  hither.  But  every 
dream  and  every  loyalty  was  with  the  unhappy  land 
from  which  I  came. 

For  many  months  the  music  of  New  York  harbor 
spoke  only  of  home.  Every  outgoing  steamer  that 
opened  its  throat  made  me  homesick.  America  was 
New  York,  and  New  York  was  down  town,  and 
down  town  was  a  vortex  of  new  duties.  There  I 
learned  the  bewildering  foreign  tongue  of  earning 
a  living,  and  the  art  of  eating  at  Childs'.  At  night 
the  hall-bedroom  near  Broadway,  and  the  resource- 
less  promenade  up  and  down  Broadway  for  amuse 
ment.  The  only  women  to  say  "  dear,"  the  women 
who  say  it  on  the  street. 

In  Chicago,  not  in  New  York,  I  found  the  United 
States.  The  word  "  settlement  "  gave  me  my  first 
puzzled  intimation  that  there  was  somewhere  a  clew 
to  this  grim  struggle  down  town.  I  had  looked 
for  it  in  boarding-houses.  I  had  looked  for  it  in 
stenographic  night-schools.  I  had  sought  it  in  the 
blotchy  Sunday  newspaper,  in  Coney  Island,  in  long 
jaunts  up  the  Palisades.  I  had  looked  for  it  among 
the  street-walkers,  the  first  to  proffer  intimacy. 
And  of  course,  not  being  clever  enough,  I  had  over 
looked  it.  But  in  Chicago,  as  I  say,  I  came  on  it  at 
home. 

America  dawned  for  me  in  a  social  settlement. 
It  dawned  for  me  as  a  civilization  and  a  faith.  In 
all  my  first  experiences  of  my  employers  I  got  not 
one  glimpse  of  American  civilization.  Theirs  was 
the  language  of  smartness,  alertness,  brightness,  suc 
cess,  efficiency,  and  I  tried  to  learn  it,  but  it  was  a 

[  40  ] 


difficult  and  alien  tongue.  Some  of  them  were  law 
yers,  but  they  were  interested  in  penmanship  and 
ability  to  clean  ink-bottles.  Some  of  them  were 
business  men,  but  they  were  interested  in  ability  to 
typewrite  and  to  keep  the  petty  cash.  It  was  not 
their  fault.  Ours  was  not  an  affair  of  the  heart. 
But  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  social  settlement,  I 
should  still  be  an  alien  to  the  bone. 

Till  I  knew  a  social  settlement  the  American  flag 
was  still  a  flag  on  a  circus-tent,  a  gay  flag  but  cheap. 
The  cheapness  of  the  United  States  was  the  mes 
sage  of  quick-lunch  and  the  boarding-house,  of  vaude 
ville  and  Coney  Island  and  the  Sunday  newspaper, 
of  the  promenade  on  Broadway.  In  the  social  set 
tlement  I  came  on  something  entirely  different. 
Here  on  the  ash-heap  of  Chicago  was  a  blossom  of 
something  besides  success.  The  house  was  saturated 
in  the  perfume  of  the  stockyards,  to  make  it  sweet. 
A  trolley-line  ran  by  its  bedroom  windows,  to  make 
it  musical.  It  was  thronged  with  Jews  and  Greeks 
and  Italians  and  soulful  visitors,  to  make  it  restful. 
It  was  inhabited  by  highstrung  residents,  to  make  it 
easy.  But  it  was  the  first  place  in  all  America 
where  there  came  to  me  a  sense  of  the  intention  of 
democracy,  the  first  place  where  I  found  a  flame 
by  which  the  melting-pot  melts.  I  heard  queer 
words  about  it.  The  men,  I  learned,  were  molly 
coddles,  and  the  women  were  sexually  unemployed. 
The  ruling  class  spoke  of  "  unsettlement  workers  " 
with  animosity,  the  socialists  of  a  mealy-mouthed 
compromise.  Yet  in  that  strange  haven  of  clear 
humanitarian  faith  I  discovered  what  I  suppose  I 
had  been  seeking — the  knowledge  that  America  had 
a  soul. 

[  4i   ] 


How  one  discovers  these  things  it  is  hard  to  put 
honestly.  It  is  like  trying  to  recall  the  first  fair 
wind  of  spring.  But  I  know  that  slowly  and  un 
consciously  the  atmosphere  of  the  settlement  thawed 
out  the  asperity  of  alienism.  There  were  Ameri 
cans  of  many  kinds  in  residence,  from  Illinois,  from 
Michigan,  from  New  York,  English-Americans, 
Russian-Americans,  Austrian-Americans,  German- 
Americans,  men  who  had  gone  to  Princeton  and 
Harvard,  women  spiritually  lavendered  in  Bryn 
Mawr.  The  place  bristled  with  hyphens.  But  the 
Americanism  was  of  a  kind  that  opened  to  the  least 
pressure  from  without,  and  never  shall  I  forget  the 
way  these  residents  with  their  "  North  Side  "  friends 
had  managed  so  graciously  to  domesticate  the  an 
nual  festival  of  my  own  nationality.  That,  strange 
though  it  may  seem,  is  the  more  real  sort  of  Ameri 
canization  Day. 

From  Walt  Whitman,  eventually,  the  naturaliz 
ing  alien  breathes  in  American  air,  but  I  doubt  if  I 
should  have  ever  known  the  meaning  of  Walt  Whit 
man  had  I  not  lived  in  that  initiating  home.  It  was 
easy  in  later  years  to  see  new  meanings  in  the  Amer 
ican  flag,  to  stand  with  Ethiopia  Saluting  the  Colors, 
but  it  was  in  the  settlement  I  found  the  sources  from 
which  it  was  dyed.  For  there,  to  my  amazement, 
one  was  not  expected  to  believe  that  man's  proper 
place  is  on  a  Procrustean  bed  of  profiteering.  A 
different  tradition  of  America  lived  there,  one  in 
which  the  earlier  faiths  had  come  through,  in  which 
the  way  to  heaven  was  not  necessarily  up  a  sky 
scraper.  In  New  England,  later,  I  found  many 
ideas  of  which  the  settlement  was  symptomatic,  but 
as  I  imbibed  them  they  were  "  America  "  for  me. 

[  42  ] 


What  it  means  to  come  at  last  into  possession 
of  Lincoln,  whose  spirit  is  so  precious  to  the  social 
settlement,  is  probably  unintelligible  to  Lincoln's 
normal  inheritors.  To  understand  this,  however, 
is  to  understand  the  birth  of  a  loyalty.  In  the  coun 
tries  from  which  we  come  there  have  been  men  of 
such  humane  ideals,  but  they  have  almost  without 
exception  been  men  beyond  the  pale.  The  heroes  of 
the  peoples  of  Europe  have  not  been  the  governors 
of  Europe.  They  have  been  the  spokesmen  of  the 
governed.  But  here  among  America's  governors 
and  statesmen  was  a  simple  authenticator  of  humane 
ideals.  To  inherit  him  becomes  for  the  European 
not  an  abandonment  of  old  loyalties,  but  a  summary 
of  them  in  a  new.  In  the  microcosm  of  the  settle 
ment  perhaps  Lincolnism  is  too  simple.  Many  of 
one's  promptest  acquiescences  are  revised  as  one 
meets  and  eats  with  the  ruling  class  later  on.  But 
the  salt  of  this  American  soil  is  Lincoln.  When 
one  finds  that,  one  is  naturalized. 

It  is  curious  how  the  progress  of  naturalization 
becomes  revealed  to  one.  I  still  recollect  with  a 
thrill  the  first  time  I  attended  a  national  political 
convention  and  listened  to  the  roll-call  of  the  States. 
"  Alabama!  Arizona!  Arkansas!"  Empty  names 
for  many  years,  at  last  they  were  filled  with  one 
clear  concept,  the  concept  of  the  democratic  experi 
ment.  "  As  I  have  walk'd  in  Alabama  my  morning 
walk  " —  the  living  appeal  to  each  state  by  name 
recalled  Whitman's  generous  amusing  scope.  "  Far 
breath'd  land!  Arctic  braced!  Mexican  breez'd! 
The  diverse!  The  compact!  The  Pennsylvanian! 
The  Virginian!  The  double  Carolinian!"  The 
orotund  roll-call  was  not  intended  to  evoke  Whit- 

[  43  ] 


man.  It  was  intended,  as  it  happened,  to  evoke 
votes  for  Taft  and  Sherman.  But  even  these  men 
were  parts  of  the  democratic  experiment.  And  the 
vastly  peopled  hall  answered  for  Walt  Whitman,  as 
the  empurpled  Penrose  did  not  answer.  It  was  they 
who  were  the  leaves  of  our  grass. 

In  Whitman,  as  William  James  has  shown,  there 
is  an  arrant  mysticism  which  his  own  Democratic 
Vistas  exposed  in  cold  light.  Yet  into  this  credulity 
as  to  the  virtue  and  possibilities  of  the  people  an 
alien  is  likely  to  enter  if  his  first  intimacy  with  Amer 
ica  came  in  the  aliens'  creche.  A  settlement  is  a 
creche  for  the  step-children  of  Europe,  and  it  is 
hard  not  to  credit  America  at  large  with  some  of 
the  impulses  which  make  the  settlement.  Such,  at 
any  rate,  is  the  tendency  I  experienced  myself. 

With  this  tendency,  what  of  loyalty  to  the  United 
States?  I  think  of  Lincoln  and  his  effected  mysti 
cism  by  Union,  union  for  the  experiment,  and  I  feel 
alive  within  me  a  complete  identification  with  this 
land.  The  keenest  realization  of  the  nation  reached 
me,  as  I  recall,  the  first  time  I  saw  the  capitol  in 
Washington.  Quite  unsuspecting  I  strolled  up  the 
hill  from  the  station,  just  about  midnight,  the  streets 
gleaming  after  a  warm  shower.  The  plaza  in  front 
of  the  capitol  was  deserted.  A  few  high  sentinel 
lamps  threw  a  lonely  light  down  the  wet  steps  and 
scantily  illumined  the  pillars.  Darkness  veiled  the 
dome.  Standing  apart  completely  by  myself,  I  felt 
as  never  before  the  union  of  which  this  strength  and 
simplicity  was  the  symbol.  The  quietude  of  the 
night,  the  scent  of  April  pervading  it,  gave  to  the 
lonely  building  a  dignity  such  as  I  had  seldom  felt 
before.  It  seemed  to  me  to  stand  for  a  fine  and 

[  44  ] 


achieved  determination,  for  a  purpose  maintained, 
for  a  quiet  faith  in  the  peoples  and  states  that  lay 
away  behind  it  to  far  horizons.  Lincoln,  I  thought, 
had  perhaps  looked  from  those  steps  on  such  a  night 
in  April,  and  felt  the  same  promise  of  spring. 


[  45  ] 


SCIENTIFIC  MANAGEMENT 

ONE  should  not  be  ashamed  to  acknowledge  the 
pursuit  of  the  secret  of  life.  That  secret,  however, 
is  shockingly  elusive.  It  is  quite  visible  to  me,  some 
where  in  space.  Like  a  ball  swung  before  a  kitten, 
it  taunts  my  eye.  Like  a  kitten  I  cannot  help  mak 
ing  a  lunge  after  it.  But  tied  to  the  ball  there 
seems  to  be  a  mischievous  invisible  string.  My  eye 
fixes  the  secret  of  life  but  it  escapes  my  paw. 

During  the  Russo-Japanese  War  I  thought  I  had 
it.  It  involved  a  great  deal  of  stern  discipline. 
Physically  it  meant  giving  up  meat,  Boston  garters 
and  cigarettes.  It  seemed  largely  composed  of  rice, 
hot  baths  followed  by  rolling  in  the  snow  and  jiu 
jitsu.  The  art  of  jiu  jitsu  hinted  at  the  very  secret 
itself.  Here  was  the  crude  West  seeking  to  slug  its 
way  to  mastery  while  the  commonest  Japanese  had 
only  to  lay  hold  of  life  by  the  little  finger  to  reduce  it 
to  squealing  submission.  The  sinister  power  of  jiu 
jitsu  haunted  me.  Unless  the  West  could  learn  it 
we  were  putty  in  Japanese  hands.  It  was  the  acme 
of  effortless  subtlety.  A  people  with  such  an  art, 
combined  with  ennobling  vegetarianism,  must  neces 
sarily  be  a  superior  people.  I  privately  believed 
that  the  Japanese  had  employed  it  in  sinking  the 
Russian  fleet. 

Thomas  Alva  Edison  displaced  jiu  jitsu  in  my 
soul  and  supplanted  it  with  a  colossal  contempt 

[  46  ] 


for  sleep.  An  insincere  contempt  for  food  I  already 
protested.  No  nation  could  hope  to  take  the  field 
that  subsisted  on  heavy  foods  —  such  unclean  things 
as  sausages  and  beer.  The  secret  of  world  mastery 
was  a  diet  of  rice.  "  We  all  eat  too  much  "  became 
a  fixed  conviction.  But  Mr.  Edison  forced  a 
greater  conviction  —  we  all  sleep  too  much  as  well. 
This  thought  had  first  come  to  me  from  Arnold  Ben 
nett.  Sleep  was  a  matter  of  habit,  of  bad  habit. 
We  sleep  ourselves  stupid.  Who  could  not  afford 
to  lose  a  minute's  sleep?  Reduce  sleep  by  a  minute 
a  day  —  who  would  miss  it?  And  in  500  days  you 
would  have  got  down  to  the  classical  forty  winks. 
Mr.  Edison  did  not  merely  preach  this  gospel.  He 
modestly  indicated  his  own  career  to  illustrate  its 
successful  practicability.  To  cut  down  sleep  and  cut 
down  food  was  the  only  way  to  function  like  a  super 
man. 

Once  started  on  this  question  of  habits  I  spent  a 
life  of  increasing  turmoil.  From  Plato  I  heard  the 
word  moderation,  but  from  William  Blake  I  learned 
that  "  the  road  of  excess  leads  to  the  palace  of  wis 
dom."  From  Benjamin  Franklin  I  gathered  the 
importance  of  good  habits,  but  William  James  glee 
fully  told  me  to  avoid  all  habits,  even  good  ones. 
And  then  came  Scientific  Management. 

The  concept  of  scientific  management  practically 
wrecked  my  life.  I  discovered  that  there  was  a 
right  way  of  doing  everything  and  that  I  was  doing 
everything  wrongly.  It  was  no  new  idea  to  me  that 
we  were  all  astray  about  the  simplest  things.  We 
did  not  know  how  to  breathe  properly.  We  did 
not  know  how  to  sit  properly.  We  did  not  know 
how  to  walk  properly.  We  wore  a  hard  hat :  it  was 

[  47  ] 


making  us  bald.  We  wore  pointed  shoes :  it  was  un 
fair  to  our  little  toe.  But  scientific  management  did 
not  dawdle  over  such  details.  It  nonchalantly 
pointed  out  that  "  waste  motions  "  were  the  chief 
characteristic  of  our  lives. 

One  of  the  most  fantastic  persons  in  the  world  is 
the  public  official  who,  before  he  can  write  a  postal 
order  or  a  tax  receipt,  has  to  make  preliminary  curls 
of  penmanship  in  the  air.  Observed  by  the  scientific 
eye,  we  are  much  more  fantastic  ourselves.  If  our 
effective  motions  could  be  registered  on  a  visual  tar 
get,  our  record  would  be  found  to  resemble  that  of 
savages  who  use  ammunition  without  a  sight  on  their 
guns.  If  we  think  that  the  ordinary  soldier's  marks 
manship  is  wasteful,  we  may  well  look  to  ourselves. 
Our  life  is  peppered  with  motions  that  fly  wide  and 
wild.  It  begins  on  awaking.  We  stretch  our  arms 
—  waste  motion !  We  ought  to  utilize  that  ges 
ture  for  polishing  our  shoes.  We  rub  our  eyes  — 
more  foolishness.  We  should  rub  our  eyes  on  Sun 
day  for  the  rest  of  the  week.  But  it  is  in  processes 
like  shaving  that  scientific  management  is  really 
needed.  Men  flatter  themselves  that  they  shave 
with  the  minimum  of  gesture.  They  believe  that 
they  complete  the  operation  under  five  minutes. 
But,  excusing  their  inaccuracy,  do  they  know  that 
under  the  inspection  of  the  scientific  manager  their 
performance  would  look  as  jagged  as  their  razor- 
blade  under  the  microscope  ?  The  day  will  probably 
arrive  when  a  superman  will  shave  with  one  superb 
motion,  as  delightful  to  the  soul  as  the  uncoiling  of 
an  orange-skin  in  one  long  unbroken  peel. 

In  reading  the  newspaper  a  man  most  betrays  the 
haphazard,  unscrutinized  conduct  of  his  morn.  We 

[  48  ] 


pick  up  our  paper  without  any  suspicion  that  we  are 
about  to  commit  intellectual  felony.  We  do  not 
know  that  the  news  editor  is  in  a  conspiracy  to  play 
on  our  minds.  If  men  gyrate  too  much  physically, 
they  certainly  are  just  as  anarchistic  when  they  start 
to  look  over  the  news.  It  is  not  so  much  that  they 
begin  the  day  with  devouring  the  details  of  a  mur 
der  or  lull  themselves  with  some  excuse  for  not  read 
ing  a  British  note  on  the  blockade.  It  is  the  fact 
that  they  are  led  by  a  ring  running  through  their  in 
stincts  to  obey  the  particular  editors  they  read. 

Viewing  myself  as  a  human  machine,  I  cannot  un 
derstand  how  the  human  race  has  survived.  Even 
conceding  that  I  was  normal,  it  is  so  much  the  worse 
for  normality.  I  simply  belong  to  a  monstrous 
breed.  There  is  not  one  important  layman's  prac 
tice  that  we  have  organized  with  regard  to  discipline 
and  efficiency.  If  bricklayers  waste  motions  in  lay 
ing  bricks,  how  about  the  motions  wasted  in  lift 
ing  one's  hat  and  the  circumvolutions  in  putting  links 
in  one's  cuffs?  How  about  the  impulsive  child  who 
wastes  motions  so  recklessly  in  giving  his  mother  a 
hug?  The  discovery  seemed  chilly  that  everything 
could  be  scientifically  managed,  everything  could  be 
perfected  if  one  took  up  an  altitudinous  position  at 
the  center  of  one's  life.  But  a  fear  of  being  chilly 
is  a  mark  of  inferiority.  It  ill  becomes  a  human 
machine. 

Yearning  to  live  scrupulously  on  twenty-four  hours 
a  day,  with  vague  longings  to  eat  very  little  and 
sleep  very  little  and  master  jiu  jitsu  and  breathe  deep 
and  chew  hard  and  practice  Mueller  exercises  and 
give  up  tobacco  and  coffee  and  hug  my  mother  scien 
tifically  and  save  waste  motions  in  putting  on  my 

[  49  ] 


shirt,  I  happened  to  come  across  two  European 
thinkers,  a  physician  and  a  metaphysician.  Paral 
leling  Shakespeare's  knowledge  of  dead  languages 
by  my  own  knowledge  of  live  ones,  I  could  not  read 
these  masters  in  the  original  to  determine  whether 
they  blended  like  oil  and  vinegar  or  fought  like  water 
and  oil.  But  in  the  eagerness  of  philosophic 
poverty  I  grasped  just  two  delightful  words  from 
them,  "  instinct  "  and  "  repression."  The  meta 
physician's  secret  of  life,  apparently,  was  to  drop 
using  one's  so-called  intelligence  so  frantically,  to  be 
come  more  like  those  marvels  of  instinct,  the  hyena 
and  the  whale.  The  physician  merely  seemed  to  put 
the  Ten  Commandments  in  their  place.  To  tell  the 
truth,  his  detection  of  "  repression "  gave  me  no 
tangible  promise.  I  exculpate  the  doctor.  But  the 
evolutionist  turned  my  thoughts  away  from  the  early 
worries  of  discipline.  This  is  the  latest  ball  in  the 
air  that  the  kitten  is  chasing,  with  no  suspicion  of 
any  tantalizing  invisible  string. 


1 50] 


THE  NEXT  NEW  YORK 

YOU'D  get  awfully  tired  if  I  told  you  everything 
about  my  visit  to  New  York  in  A.  D.  1991.  Some 
things  are  too  complicated  even  to  refer  to,  many 
things  I've  already  forgotten,  and  a  number  of  things 
I  didn't  understand.  But  as  I  had  to  return  to  my 
work  as  prison  doctor  in  1919  after  a  week  of  1991 
I  grasped  a  few  top  impressions  that  may  interest 
you.  I  hope  I  can  give  them  to  you  straight. 

The  people  on  the  street  took  my  eye  the  minute 
I  arrived  in  town.  They  looked  so  pleasing  and 
they  wore  such  stunning  clothes.  You  know  that  at 
present,  with  the  long  indoor  working  day  and  the 
mixture  of  embalmed  and  storage  and  badly  cooked 
food,  the  number  of  pasty-faced  and  emaciated  men 
and  women  is  very  bigh.  I  exempt  the  hearty 
sweating  classes  like  the  structural  iron  workers  and 
teamsters  and  porters  and  even  policemen.  You 
could  recruit  a  fine-looking  club  from  the  building 
trades.  But  stand  any  afternoon  on  Fifth  Avenue 
and  size  up  the  condition  of  the  passers-by.  You 
see  shopgirls  in  thin  cotton  who  are  under-weight, 
under-slept,  miserably  nourished  and  devitalized. 
You  see  pimply  waiters  and  stooping  clerks.  You 
see  weary,  fish-eyed  mothers  who  look  as  if  every 
day  was  washing  day.  Scores  of  sagging  middle- 
aged  people  go  by,  who  ought  to  be  taken  to  a  clinic. 
A  little  earlier  in  the  afternoon  it's  almost  impossible 


to  share  the  sidewalk  with  the  squat  factory  hands 
who  overflow  at  the  lunch  hour.  They're  hard  to 
kill,  these  poor  fellows,  but  they're  a  puny,  stink 
ing,  stunted,  ill-favored  horde.  But  the  greater 
cleanliness  of  the  people  later  on,  and  their  better 
clothes,  doesn't  put  them  in  a  very  different  class. 
You  hear  a  good  deal  about  the  queens  you  see,  but, 
really,  the  city  streets  of  New  York  in  1919,  stream 
ing  with  people  who  have  dun  clothes  to  match  dun 
faces,  make  you  wonder  what's  the  use. 

These  people  in  1991  were  good  to  look  at!  The 
three-hour  working  day  had  a  lot  to  do  with  it,  of 
course,  and  the  basic  economic  changes.  But  what 
leads  me  first  to  speak  of  appearances  is  the  huge 
responsibility  that  had  gone  to  hygienists.  I  mean 
educational  and  administrative.  In  1991,  I  found, 
people  were  really  acting  on  the  theory  that  you 
can't  have  civilization  without  sound  bodies.  The 
idea  itself  was  as  old  as  an  old  joke,  a  platitude 
in  the  mouth  of  every  pill-vender.  But  the  city  was 
working  on  it  as  if  it  were  a  pivotal  truth,  and  this 
meant  a  total  revision  of  ordinary  conduct. 

Building  the  Panama  Canal  was  a  simple  little 
job  compared  to  making  New  York  hygienic. 
Thirty  years  must  have  been  spent  in  getting  the 
folks  to  realize  that  no  man  and  woman  had  any 
hygienic  excuse  for  breeding  children  within  the  city 
limits.  It  was  sixty  years,  I  was  told,  before  it  was 
official  that  a  city  child  was  an  illegitimate  child.  At 
first  mothers  kicked  hard  when  the  illegitimates  were 
confiscated,  but  in  the  end  they  came  to  see  justice  in 
the  human  version  of  the  slogan,  u  an  acre  and  a 
cow."  It  got  rid  of  the  good  old  city-bred  medical 
formula  that  the  best  way  to  handle  pregnancy  is  to 

[  52  ] 


handle  it  as  a  pathological  condition.  Of  course  this 
prohibition  movement  made  all  sorts  of  people  mad. 
A  bunch  of  Gold  Coast  women  held  out  for  a  long 
time  on  the  score  of  personal  liberty.  Women  had 
private  city  babies  where  the  inspectors  couldn't  get 
at  them.  You  know,  just  like  private  whisky.  But 
in  the  end  the  prohibitionists  won,  and  it  had  an 
enormous  effect  on  cleaning  up  Manhattan.  It  cut 
out  all  but  the  detached  and  the  transient  residents, 
and  with  the  breathing  space  rules,  these  were  far 
less  than  you'd  suppose.  Even  with  the  great  area 
of  garden-roofs,  the  fixed  residents  were  not  much 
more  than  100,000. 

This  demobilization  wasn't  special  to  New  York. 
In  other  places  there  were  much  more  rigid  "  units." 
Hygiene,  nothing  else,  decided  the  unit  size  of  cities 
in  1991.  The  old  sprawling  haphazard  hetero 
geneous  city  gave  place  to  the  "  modern "  unit, 
permanent  residences  within  the  city  never  being 
open  to  families  that  had  children  under  fourteen. 
For  the  heads  of  such  families,  however,  the  trans 
portation  problem  was  beautifully  solved.  Every 
unit  city  came  to  be  so  constructed  that  within  half 
an  hour  of  the  u  fresh  air  and  exercise  "  homes,  men 
and  women  could  reach  factories  and  warehouses 
in  one  direction,  and  offices  and  courts  and  banks  and 
exchanges  in  another.  This  was  after  they  realized 
the  high  cost  of  noise  and  dirt.  The  noiseless,  dirt- 
less,  swift,  freight  train  took  the  place  of  most 
trucks,  and  of  course  the  remaining  trucks  shot  up 
and  down  the  non-pedestrian  sanitary  alleys.  An 
other  thing  that  interested  me  was  the  plexus  of  all 
the  things  that  are  to  be  exhibited.  This  involved  a 
great  problem  for  New  York  before  factories  were 

[  53  ] 


deported  and  the  moving  "  H.  G.  Wells  "  sidewalks 
introduced.  How  to  economize  time  and  space,  and 
yet  not  produce  too  close  a  homogeneity,  too  protein 
an  intellectual  and  aesthetic  and  social  diet,  became 
a  fascinating  question.  But  the  devotion  of  Black- 
well's  Island  to  summer  and  winter  art  and  music, 
with  all  the  other  islands  utilized  for  permanent  ex 
hibitions  gave  the  city  directors  a  certain  leeway. 
The  islands  were  made  charming.  I  was  quite 
struck  over  there,  I  think,  on  a  new  island  in  Flush 
ing  Bay,  by  the  guild-managed  shows  of  clothing, 
where  you  sat  and  watched  the  exhibits  traveling  on 
an  endless  belt,  that  stopped  when  you  wanted  it  to 
—  the  kind  that  art  exhibitions  adopted  for  certain 
purposes.  You  see,  the  old  department  stores  had 
passed  away  as  utterly  as  the  delivery  horse  and 
display  advertising  and  the  non-preventive  physician. 
And  the  old  game  of  "  seasons  "  and  fashions  was 
abandoned  soon  after  the  celebrated  trial  of  Conde 
Nast  for  the  undermining  of  the  taste  of  shopgirls. 
The  job  of  the  purchasing  consumer  was  steadily 
simplified.  Youth  of  both  sexes  learned  fairly  early 
in  life  what  they  could  and  what  they  couldn't  do 
personally  in  the  use  of  color.  No  one  thought  of 
copying  another's  color  or  design  in  dress  any  more 
than  of  copying  another's  oculist  prescription.  And 
with  the  guild  consultants  always  ready  to  help  out 
the  troubled  buyer,  the  business  of  shopping  for 
clothes  became  as  exciting  and  intelligent  as  the  pas 
time  of  visiting  a  private  exhibition.  In  this  way, 
backed  up  by  the  guilds,  a  daring  employment  of 
color  became  generally  favored.  But  a  big  item  in 
this  programme  was  the  refusal  of  the  guilds  to  pre 
scribe  any  costumes  for  people  who  needed  medical 

[  54-  ] 


care  first.     It  was  useless,  the  guilds  said,  to  deco 
rate  a  mud-pie.     And  the  hygienists  agreed. 

So  you  got  back  always  to  the  doctrine  of  a  sound 
body.  In  the  hygienic  riots  of  1936  some  horrible 
lynchings  took  place.  An  expert  from  the  Chicago 
stockyards  was  then  running  the  New  York  subways. 
He  devised  the  upper-berth  system  by  which  the 
space  between  people's  heads  and  the  roof  of  the 
car  could  be  used  on  express  trains  for  hanging  up 
passengers,  like  slabs  of  bacon.  It  was  only  after  a 
few  thousand  citizens  had  failed  to  respond  to  the 
pulmotor  which  was  kept  at  every  station  to  revive 
weaklings,  that  the  divine  right  of  human  beings  to 
decent  transportation  became  a  real  public  issue. 
The  hygienists  made  the  great  popular  mistake  of 
trying  to  save  the  stockyards  man.  They  knew  he 
had  a  sick  soul.  They  believed  that  by  psycho 
analyzing  him  and  showing  he  had  always  wanted  to 
skin  cats  alive,  they  could  put  the  traction  question 
on  a  higher  plane.  Unfortunately  the  Hearst  of 
that  era  took  up  the  issue  on  the  so-called  popular 
side.  He  denounced  the  hygienists  as  heartless  ex 
perts  and  showed  how  science  was  really  a  conspiracy 
in  favor  of  the  ruling  class.  The  hygienic  riots  re 
sulted  in  a  miserable  set-back  to  the  compulsory 
psycho-analysis  of  all  criminals,  but  the  bloody  assas 
sination  of  the  leading  hygienist  of  the  day  brought 
about  a  reaction,  and  within  thirty  years  no  judge 
was  allowed  to  serve  who  wasn't  an  expert  in  psychic 
work  and  hygiene.  This  decision  was  greatly  aided 
by  the  publication  of  a  brochure  revealing  the  rela 
tion  of  criminal  verdicts  to  the  established  neuroses 
of  city  magistrates.  The  promise  that  this  work 
would  be  extended  and  published  as  a  supplement  to 

[  55  ] 


the  Federal  Reporter  went  a  long  way  toward  con 
verting  the  Bar.  The  old  pretensions  of  the  Bar 
went  rapidly  to  pieces  when  political  use  was  made  of 
important  psychological  and  physiological  facts. 
The  hygienists  spoke  of  "  the  mighty  stream  of  mor 
bid  compulsion  broadening  down  to  more  morbid 
compulsion."  By  1950  no  man  with  an  CEdipus 
complex  could  even  get  on  the  Real  Estate  ticket,  and 
the  utter  collapse  of  militarism  came  about  with  the 
magnificently  scientific  biographies  of  all  the  promi 
nent  armament  advocates  in  the  evil  era. 

I  had  a  surprise  coming  for  me  in  the  total  dis 
appearance  of  prisons.  Though  I  hate  to  confess 
it,  I  was  a  little  amazed  when  I  found  that  the  old 
penology  was  just  as  historical  in  1991  as  the  method 
ology  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition.  Scientific  men  did 
possess  models  of  prisons  like  Sing  Sing  and  Tren 
ton  and  Atlanta  and  Leavenworth,  and  the  tiny  ad 
vances  in  the  latter  prisons  were  thought  amusing. 
But  the  deformity  of  the  human  minds  and  the  social 
systems  that  permitted  such  prisons  as  ours  was  a 
matter  for  acute  discussion  and  analysis  everywhere, 
even  in  casual  unspecialized  groups.  This  general 
intelligence  made  it  clear  to  me  that  social  hygiene 
was  never  understood  up  to  the  middle  of  the 
twentieth  century.  The  very  name,  after  all,  was 
appropriated  by  men  afraid  to  specify  the  sex  dis 
eases  they  were  then  cleaning  up.  Puritanism,  serv 
iceable  as  it  was  in  its  time,  had  kept  men  from  ob 
taining  and  examining  the  evidence  necessary  to  right 
conclusions  about  conduct.  "  Think,"  said  one  de 
lightful  youth  to  me,  on  my  first  day  in  1991,  "  think 
of  not  knowing  the  first  facts  as  to  the  physiological 
laws  of  continence.  Think  of  starting  out  after  gen- 

1 56  ] 


eral  physical  well-being  by  the  preposterous  road  of 
universal  military  service.  Think  of  electing  Con 
gressmen  in  the  old  days  without  applying  even  the 
Binet  test  to  them.  Why,  to-day  we  know  nothing 
about  '  the  pursuit  of  happiness,'  fair  as  that  object 
is,  and  yet  we  should  no  more  stand  for  such  indis- 
criminateness  than  we'd  allow  a  day  to  go  by  with 
out  swimming." 

The  youth,  I  should  specify,  was  a  female  youth, 
what  we  call  a  girl.  I  had  nothing  to  say  to  her. 
But  my  mind  shot  back  to  1919,  to  which  I  was  so 
soon  to  return,  and  I  thought  of  a  millionaire's  de 
vice  I  had  once  seen  in  Chicago.  Deep  in  the  base 
ment  of  a  great  factory  building  there  was  a  small 
electric-lighted  cell,  and  in  this  bare  cell  there  was 
a  gymnastic  framework,  perhaps  four  feet  high,  on 
which  was  strapped  an  ordinary  leather  saddle.  In 
front  of  the  saddle  there  rose  two  thin  steel  sticks, 
and  out  of  them  came  thin  leather  reins.  By  means 
of  a  clever  arrangement  of  springs  down  below  that 
responded  to  an  electric  current,  the  whole  mechan 
ism  was  able  to  move  up  and  down  and  backward 
and  forward  in  short  stabby  jerks  that  were  sup 
posed  to  stir  up  your  gizzard  in  practically  the  same 
way  as  the  motion  of  a  horse.  This  was,  in  fact, 
a  synthetic  horse,  bearing  the  same  aesthetic  relation 
to  a  real  horse  that  a  phonograph  song  does  to  a 
real  song  that  is  poured  out,  so  to  speak,  in  the  sun. 
And  here,  in  the  bald  basement  cell  with  its  two 
barred  basement  windows  (closed),  the  constipated 
millionaires  take  their  turns,  whenever  they  can  bear 
it,  going  through  the  canned  motions  of  a  ride,  star 
ing  with  bored  eyes  at  the  blind  tiled  wall  in  front 
of  them.  So  far,  in  1919,  had  the  worship  of 

[  57  ] 


Hygeia  carried  the  helot-captains  of  industry.  And 
from  that  basement,  from  that  heathen  symbol  of 
perverted  exercise,  men  had  returned  to  a  primary 
acceptance  of  the  human  body  and  a  primary  law 
that  its  necessities  be  everywhere  observed.  Not 
such  a  great  accomplishment,  I  thought,  in  seventy 
years.  And  yet  it  gave  to  mankind  the  leg-up  they 
had  to  have  for  the  happiness  they  long  for. 


58 


CHICAGO 

A  GOOD  deal  of  nonsense  is  talked  about  the  per 
sonality  of  towns.  What  most  people  enjoy  about 
a  town  is  familiarity,  not  personality,  and  they  can 
give  no  penetrating  account  of  their  affection. 
"  What  is  the  finest  town  in  the  world?  "  the  New 
York  reporters  recently  asked  a  young  recruit,  eager 
for  him  to  eulogize  New  York.  "  Why,"  he  an 
swered,  "  San  Malo,  France.  I  was  born  there." 
That  is  the  usual  reason,  perhaps  the  best  reason, 
why  a  person  likes  any  place  on  earth.  The  clew  is 
autobiographical. 

But  towns  do  have  personality.  Contrast  Lon 
don  and  New  York,  or  Portland  and  Norfolk,  or 
Madison  and  St.  Augustine.  Chicago  certainly  has 
a  personality,  and  it  would  be  obscurantism  of  the 
most  modern  kind  to  pretend  that  there  was  no 
"  soul  "  in  Chicago  either  to  like  or  to  dislike.  Peo 
ple  who  have  never  lived  in  Chicago  are  usually  con 
tent  with  disliking  it,  and  those  who  have  seen  it 
superficially,  or  smelled  it  in  passing  when  the  stock 
yard  factories  were  making  glue,  can  seldom  un 
derstand  why  Chicagoans  love  it.  Official  visitors, 
of  course,  profess  to  admire  it,  with  the  eagerness  of 
anxious  missionaries  seeking  to  make  good  with  can 
nibals.  But  except  for  men  who  knew  Bursley  or 

Chicago,  by  H.  C.  Chat  field-Taylor.  Illustrations  by  Lester  G. 
Hornby.  Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Co. 

[  59  ] 


Belfast,  and  slipped  into  Chicago  as  into  old  slip 
pers  —  men  like  Arnold  Bennett  and  George  Ber- 
mingham  —  there  are  few  outsiders  who  really  feel 
at  home.  Stevenson  passed  through  it  on  his  im 
migrant  journey  across  the  plains,  pondering  that 
one  who  had  so  promptly  subscribed  a  sixpence  to 
restore  the  city  after  the  fire  should  be  compelled 
to  pay  for  his  own  ham  and  eggs.  He  thought 
Chicago  great  but  gloomy.  Kipling  shrank  from 
it  like  a  sensitive  plant.  It  horrified  him.  H.  G. 
Wells  thought  it  amazing,  but  chiefly  amazing  as  a 
lapse  from  civilization.  All  of  these  leave  little 
doubt  how  Chicago  first  hits  the  eye.  It  is,  in  fact, 
dirty,  unruly  and  mean.  It  has  size  without  spa 
ciousness,  opportunity  without  imaginativeness,  ac 
tion  without  climax,  wealth  without  distinction.  A 
sympathetic  artist  finds  picturesqueness  in  it,  though 
far  from  gracious  where  most  characteristic;  but  for 
the  most  part  it  is  shoddy,  dingy  and  vulgar,  making 
more  noise  downtown  than  a  boiler  works,  and  rain 
ing  smuts  all  day  as  a  symbolic  reproach  from 
heaven.  It  is  not  for  its  beaux  yeux  that  the  out 
sider  begins  to  love  the  town. 

But  a  great  town  is  like  the  elephant  of  the  fable ; 
one  must  see  it  altogether  before  one  can  define  it; 
one  can  believe  almost  anything  monstrous  from  a 
partial  view.  Time,  in  the  case  of  Chicago,  is  su 
premely  necessary  —  about  three  years  as  a  mini 
mum.  Then  its  goodness  passeth  all  pre-matri- 
monial  understanding;  its  essence  is  disclosed. 

Mr.  H.  C.  Chatfield-Taylor  has  qualified,  so  far 
as  time  is  concerned,  to  speak  of  Chicago,  and  I 
think  it  would  be  churlish  not  to  agree  that  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  old  settler  he  has  done  his  city 

[  60] 


proud.  All  old  Chicagoans  will  recognize  at  once 
why  Mr.  Taylor  should  go  back  to  the  beginning, 
and  they  will  be  delighted  at  the  clarity  with  which 
the  early  history  is  expounded,  as  well  as  the  era  be 
fore  the  Civil  War.  They  will  also  understand  and 
rejoice  over  the  repetition  of  grand  old  names  — 
Gordon  S.  Hubbard,  John  Kinzie,  Mark  Beaubien, 
Uranus  H.  Crosby,  Sherman  of  the  Sherman  hotel, 
General  Hart  L.  Stewart  and  Long  John  Went- 
worth.  In  every  town  in  the  world  there  is,  of 
course,  a  Long  John  or  a  Big  Bill,  but  Chicagoans 
will  savor  this  reference  to  their  own  familiar,  and 
will  delight  in  the  snug  feeling  that  they  too  "  knew 
Chicago  when."  Mr.  Taylor  is  also  dear  to  his 
townsmen  when  he  harks  back  to  days  before  the 
Fire.  In  those  days  the  West-siders  were  a  little 
superior  because  they  had  the  Episcopal  Cathedral 
of  Saints  Peter  and  Paul,  and  the  church-going  folk 
could  hear  the  "  fast  young  men  "  speeding  trotting 
horses  past  the  church  doors.  Such  performances 
seemed  fairly  worldly,  but  later  did  not  Mr.  Taylor 
himself  drive  his  high-steppers  to  the  races  at  Wash 
ington  Park,  and  did  he  not  woo  the  heart  of  the 
city  where  gilded  youth  cherished  a  "  nod  of  recog 
nition  from  Potter  Palmer,  John  B.  Drake,  or  John 
A.  Rice."  The  dinners  of  antelope  steak  and  roast 
buffalo  at  the  Grand  Pacific  recall  a  Chicago  ante 
dating  the  World's  Fair  that  left  strong  traces  into 
the  twentieth  century,  a  Chicago  that  is  commemo 
rated  with  grace  and  kindliness  in  the  fair  pages  of 
this  book. 

But  this  is  not  enough.  If  Mr.  Taylor's  heart 
lingers  among  the  "  marble-fronts  "  of  his  youth, 
this  is  not  peculiarly  Chicagoan.  Such  fond  reminis- 

[  61  ] 


cence  is  the  common  nature  of  man.  And  a  better 
basis  for  loving  Chicago  must  be  offered  than  the 
evidence  that  one  teethed  on  it,  battered  darling  that 
it  is.  Mr.  Taylor's  better  explanation,  as  I  read  it, 
is  extremely  significant.  He  identifies  himself  fully 
and  eagerly  with  the  New  Englanders  who  made  the 
town.  Bounty-jumpers  and  squatters  and  specula 
tors,  war  widows  and  politicians  and  anarchists  and 
aliens  —  all  these  go  into  his  perspective,  as  do  the 
emergencies  of  the  Fire  and  the  splendors  of  the 
Fair.  But  the  marrow  of  his  pride  in  Chicago  is 
his  community  with  its  origins  in  "  men,  like  myself, 
of  New  England  blood,  whose  fathers  felled  our 
forests  and  tilled  our  prairie  land."  Since  the  time 
he  was  born,  he  tells  us,  more  than  two  million  peo 
ple  have  been  added  to  the  population  of  Chicago. 
Only  a  fifth  of  the  Great  West  Side  are  now  Ameri 
can-born,  and  the  Lake  Shore  Drive  was  still  a  ceme 
tery  when  Mr.  Taylor  was  a  boy  on  that  dignified 
West  Side.  This  links  Mr.  Taylor  closely  to  the  be 
ginning  of  things.  Hence  he  likes  to  insist  in  his 
kindly  spirit  that  Chicago's  puritan  "  aristocracy  " 
is  the  source  of  Chicago  altruism,  that  "  the  society 
of  Chicago  [is]  more  puritanical  than  that  of  any 
great  city  in  the  world,"  and  that  "  back  of  Chicago's 
strenuousness  and  vim  stands  the  spirit  of  her 
founders  holding  her  in  leash,  the  tenets  of  the  Pil 
grim  Fathers  being  still  a  potent  factor  in  her  life 
...  .  .  She  possesses  a  New  England  conscience  to 
leaven  her  diverse  character  and  make  her  truly 
—  the  pulse  of  America." 

Every  bird  takes  what  he  finds  to  build  his  own 
spiritual  nest.  Personally,  I  love  Chicago,  ugly  and 
wild  and  rude,  but  I  prefer  to  see  it  as  an  impuritan. 

[  62  ] 


Its  sprawling  hideousness,  indeed,  has  always  seemed 
a  direct  result  of  the  private-minded  policy  that  dis 
tinguished  Chicago's  big  little  men.  The  triumvi 
rate  that  Mr.  Taylor  mentions  had  no  statesmanship 
in  them.  One  was  an  admirable  huckster,  another 
an  inflexible  paternalist,  the  third  a  fine  old  philistine 
who  carved  a  destiny  in  ham.  But  these  men  gave 
themselves  and  their  city  to  business  enterprise  in 
its  ugliest  manifestation.  The  city  of  course  has  its 
remissions,  its  loveliness,  but  the  incidental  brutality 
of  that  enterprise  is  a  main  characteristic  of  the  city, 
a  characteristic  barely  suggested  by  Mr.  Taylor,  not 
clearly  imagined  by  Mr.  Hornby  in  his  graceful 
drawings,  so  beautifully  reproduced. 

One  would  like,  as  a  corrective  to  Mr.  Taylor's 
pleasant  picture,  some  leaves  from  Upton  Sinclair's 
Jungle,  Jack  London's  Iron  Heel,  Frank  Norris's 
Pit,  H.  K.  Webster's  Great  Adventure,  the  fiction  of 
Edith  Wyatt  and  Henry  Fuller  and  Robert  Her- 
rick  and  Will  Paine  and  Weber  Linn  and  Sherwood 
Anderson,  the  poetry  of  Edgar  Lee  Masters  and 
Carl  Sandburg,  the  prose  of  Jane  Addams.  No  one 
who  looked  at  the  City  Council  ten  years  ago,  for 
example,  can  forget  the  brutality  of  that  institution 
of  collective  life. 

They  called  the  old-time  aldermen  the  "  gray 
wolves."  They  looked  like  wolves,  cold-eyed, 
grizzled,  evil.  They  preyed  on  the  city  South  side, 
West  side,  North  side,  making  the  shaky  tenements 
and  black  brothels  and  sprawling  immigrant-filled  in 
dustries  pay  tribute  in  twenty  ways.  One  night, 
curious  to  see  Chicago  at  its  worst,  four  of  us  went 
to  a  place  that  was  glibly  described  as  "  the  wickedest 
place  in  the  world."  It  was  a  saloon  under  the  West 

[  63  ] 


side  elevated,  and  a  room  back  of  the  saloon.  At 
first  it  seemed  merely  dirty  and  meager,  with  its 
runty  negro  at  the  raucous  piano.  But  at  last  the 
regular  customers  collected;  the  sots,  the  dead-beats, 
the  human  wreckage  of  both  sexes,  the  woman  of  a 
fat  pallor,  the  woman  without  a  nose  .  .  .  They 
surrounded  us,  piled  against  us,  clawed  us.  And 
that,  in  its  way,  is  Chicago,  Stead's  Satanic  vision 
of  it  revealed. 

But  the  other  side  of  that  hideousness  in  Chicago 
is  the  thing  one  loves  it  for,  the  large  freedom  from 
caste  and  cant  which  is  so  much  an  essential  of  de 
mocracy,  the  cordiality  which  comes  with  fraternity, 
the  access  to  men  and  life  of  all  kinds.  Chicago 
is  a  scrimmage  but  also  an  adventure,  a  frank  and 
passionate  creator  struggling  with  hucksters  and 
hogsters,  a  blundering  friend  to  genius  among  the 
assassins  of  genius,  a  frontier  against  the  Europe 
that  meant  an  established  order,  an  order  of  succes 
sion  and  a  weary  bread-line.  In  Chicago,  for  all 
its  philistinism,  there  is  the  condition  of  hope  that  is 
half  the  spiritual  battle,  whatever  stockades  the  puri 
tans  try  to  build.  It  is  that  that  makes  one  lament 
the  silence  in  Mr.  Taylor's  pleasant  book.  But  the 
puritanical  tradition  requires  silence.  Polite  and  re 
fined,  self-centered  and  private-minded,  attached  to 
property  and  content  within  limitations,  it  made 
visible  Chicago  what  it  is. 


THE  CLOUDS  OF  KERRY 

IT  is  the  Gulf  Stream,  they  say,  that  makes 
Kerry  so  wet.  All  the  reservoir  of  the  Atlantic, 
at  any  rate,  lies  to  the  west  and  south,  and  the  pre 
vailing  winds  come  laden  with  its  moisture.  Kerry 
lifts  its  mountains  to  those  impinging  winds  — 
mountains  that  in  the  sunlight  are  a  living  colorful 
presence  on  every  side,  but  cruelly  denuded  by  the 
constant  rains.  For  usually  the  winds  flow  slowly 
from  the  sea,  soft  voluminous  clouds  gathered  in 
their  arms,  and  as  they  pass  they  sweep  their  droop 
ing  veils  down  over  the  silent  and  somewhat  melan 
choly  land. 

In  the  night-time  a  light  or  two  may  be  seen  dot 
ted  at  great  intervals  on  those  lonely  hillsides,  but 
for  the  most  part  the  habitations  are  in  the  cooms 
or  hollows  grooved  by  nature  between  the  parallel 
hills.  The  soil  on  the  mountains  is  washed  away. 
The  vestiture  that  remains  is  a  watery  sedge,  and  it 
is  only  by  garnering  every  handful  of  earth  that  the 
tenants  can  attain  cultivation  even  in  the  cooms. 
Their  fields,  often  held  in  common,  are  so  small  as 
to  be  laughable,  and  deep  drainage  trenches  are 
dug  every  few  yards.  Sometimes  in  the  shifting 
sunlight  between  showers  a  light-green  patch  will 
loom  magically  in  the  distance,  witness  to  man's  inde 
fatigable  effort  to  achieve  a  holding  amid  the  rocks. 
An  awkward  boreen  will  climb  to  that  holding,  and 

[  65  ] 


if  one  goes  there  one  may  find  a  typical  tall  spare 
countryman,  bright  of  eye  and  sharp  of  feature, 
housing  in  his  impoverished  cottage  a  large  brood 
of  children.  To  build  with  his  own  hands  a  water 
tight  house  is  the  ambition  for  which  this  man  is 
slaving,  and  the  slates  and  cement  may  be  ready 
there  near  the  pit  which  he  himself  has  dug  for 
foundation.  A  yellowish  wife  will  perhaps  be  nurs 
ing  the  latest  baby  in  the  gloomy  one-roomed  hovel, 
and  as  one  talks  to  the  man,  respectful  but  sensible, 
and  admirable  in  more  ways  than  he  can  ever  dream 
of,  one  elf  after  another  will  come  out,  bare-legged, 
sharp-eyed,  shy,  inquisitive,  to  peer  from  far  off  at 
the  stranger.  He  may  be  illiterate,  this  grave  hill 
side  man,  but  his  starvelings  go  down  the  boreen 
to  the  bare  cold  schoolhouse,  to  be  taught  whatever 
the  pompous  well-meaning  teacher  can  put  into  their 
minds  of  an  education  designed  for  civil  service 
clerks.  The  children  may  be  seen  down  there  if  one 
passes  at  their  playtime,  kicking  a  rag  football  with 
their  bare  feet,  as  poor  and  as  gay  as  the  birds. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  iron  was  deep  in  these 
farmers'  souls.  Eking  the  marrow  from  the 
bones  of  the  land,  they  were  so  poor  that  they  had 
nothing  to  live  on  but  potatoes  and  the  milk  of  their 
own  tiny  cattle,  the  Kerry-Dexter  breed  of  cattle 
that  alone  can  pick  a  living  from  that  ground.  Un 
til  twenty-five  years  ago,  I  was  told,  some  of  the 
hillside  men  had  never  bought  a  pound  of  tea  in 
their  lives,  or  known  what  it  was  to  spend  money  for 
clothes.  To  this  day  they  wear  their  light-colored 
homespun,  and  one  will  meet  at  the  fairs  many  fine 
sturdy  middle-aged  farmers  with  a  cut  to  their  home 
made  clothes  that  reminds  one  of  the  Bretons.  It 

[  66  ] 


was  from  these  simple  and  ascetic  men,  fighting 
nature  for  grim  life,  that  landlords  took  their  rack- 
rents  —  one  of  them,  the  Earl  of  Kenmare,  erecting 
a  castle  at  near-by  Killarney  that  thousands  of  Amer 
icans  have  admired.  The  fight  against  landlordism 
was  bitter  in  Kerry.  I  met  one  countryman  who  was 
evicted  three  times,  but  finally,  despite  the  remorse 
less  protests  of  the  agent,  was  allowed  to  harbor  in 
a  lean-to  against  the  wall  of  the  church.  There 
were  persecutions  and  murders,  the  mailed  hand  of 
the  law  and  the  stealthy  hand  of  the  assassin.  Even 
to-day  if  that  much-evicted  tenant  had  not  been  sure 
of  me  he  would  not  have  spoken  his  mind.  But 
when  he  was  sure,  he  confided  with  a  winning  smile 
that  at  last  he  had  something  to  live  for  and  work 
for,  a  strip  of  land  that  was  an  "  economic  holding," 
determined  by  an  Estates  Commission  which  has 
shouldered  the  landlord  to  one  side  and  estimated 
with  its  own  disinterested  eyes  the  large  nutritive 
possibilities  of  gorse  and  heather  and  rock  and  bog. 
Why  do  they  stay?  But  most  of  them  have  not 
stayed.  Kerry  has  not  one-third  the  people  to-day 
that  it  had  seventy  years  ago.  The  storekeeper  in 
a  seaside  village  where  I  stopped  in  Kerry,  a  little 
father  of  the  people  if  there  ever  was  one,  yet  had 
acted  the  dubious  role  of  emigration  agent,  and  had 
passed  thousands  of  his  countrymen  on  to  America. 
A  few  go  to  England.  u  For  nine  years,"  one  hard 
working  occupier  mentioned  to  me,  "  I  lived  in  the 
shadow  of  London  Bridge."  But  for  Kerry,  the 
next  country  to  America,  America  is  the  land  of 
golden  promise.  In  a  field  called  Coolnacapogue, 
"  hollow  of  the  dock  leaves,"  I  stopped  to  ask  of  a 
bright  lad  the  way  to  Sneem,  and  he  ended  by  asking 

[  67  ] 


me  the  way  to  America.  It  is  west  they  turn,  away 
from  the  Empire  that  "  always  foul-played  us  in  the 
past,  and  I  am  afeard  will  foul-play  us  again." 

u  The  next  time  you  come,  please  God  you'll  bring 
us  Home  Rule."  That  is  the  way  they  speak  to  you, 
if  they  trust  you.  They  want  government  where  it 
cannot  play  so  easily  the  tricks  that  seared  them  of 
old. 

I  went  with  a  government  inspector  on  one  mis 
sion  in  Kerry.  At  the  foot  of  the  forbidding  west 
ern  hills  there  was  a  bleak  tongue  of  land  cut  off 
by  two  mountain  streams.  At  times  these  streams 
were  low  enough  to  ford  with  ease,  but  after  a  heavy 
rain  the  water  would  rise  four  or  five  feet  in  a  few 
hours  and  the  streams  would  become  impassable  tor 
rents.  For  the  sake  of  a  widow  whose  hovel  stood 
on  this  island  the  Commission  consented  to  build  a 
little  bridge.  The  concrete  piers  had  been  set  at 
either  side  successfully,  but  the  central  pier,  five  tons 
in  weight,  had  only  just  been  planted  when  a  rain 
came,  and  a  torrent,  and  the  unwieldy  block  of 
cement  had  toppled  over  in  the  stream.  This  little 
catastrophe  was  the  first  news  conveyed  by  the 
paternal  storekeeper  to  the  inspector  on  our  arrival 
in  town,  and  we  walked  out  to  see  what  could  be 
done. 

Standing  by  the  stream,  we  were  visible  to  the 
expectant  woman  on  the  hill.  In  the  soft  mournful 
light  of  the  September  afternoon  I  could  see  her 
outlined  against  the  gray  sky  as  she  oame  flying  to 
learn  her  fate.  She  came  bare  of  head  and  bare  of 
foot,  a  small  plaid  shawl  clasped  to  her  bosom  with 
one  hand.  Her  free  hand  supported  her  taut  body 
as  she  leaned  on  her  own  pier  and  bent  her  deep 

[  68  ] 


eyes  on  us  across  the  stream.  As  she  told  in  the 
slow  lilting  accent  of  Kerry  the  pregnant  story  of 
the  downfall  of  the  center  pier,  she  would  cast  those 
eyes  to  the  inanimate  bulk  of  concrete,  half  sub 
merged  in  the  water,  as  if  to  contemn  it  for  lying 
there  in  flat  helplessness.  But  she  was  not  excited 
or  obsequious.  A  woman  of  forty,  her  expression 
bespoke  the  sternness  and  gravity  of  her  fight  for 
existence,  yet  she  was  a  quiet  and  valiant  fighter. 
She  was,  I  think,  the  most  dignified  suppliant  I  have 
ever  beheld. 

If  the  pier  could  not  be  raised,  she  foresaw  the 
anxieties  of  the  winter.  She  seemed  to  look  into 
them  through  the  grayness  of  the  failing  light.  She 
foresaw  the  sudden  risings  of  the  stream,  the  race 
for  her  children  to  the  schoolhouse,  the  risk  of  carry 
ing  them  across  on  her  back.  And  she  clung  to  her 
children. 

'  You  have  had  trouble,  my  poor  woman?  "  the 
inspector  said,  knowing  that  her  husband  two  years 
before  had  been  drowned  in  the  torrent. 

"  Aye,  indeed,  your  honor,  'tis  I  am  the  pity  of  the 
world.  One  year  ago  my  child  was  lost  to  me.  It 
was  in  the  night-time,  he  was  taken  with  a  hemor 
rhage,  with  respects  to  your  honor.  I  woke  the 
children  to  have  them  go  for  to  bring  the  doctor, 
but  it  was  too  late  an  they  returned.  He  quenched 
in  my  arms,  at  the  dead  hour  of  night." 

"  The  pity  of  the  world  "  she  was  in  truth.  The 
inspector  could  do  nothing  until  the  ground  was 
firm  enough  to  support  horses  and  tackle  in  the 
spring.  We  walked  back  through  the  somber  bog, 
the  mountains  seeming  to  creep  after  us,  and  we 
speculated  on  the  bad  work  of  the  contractor.  To 

[  69  ] 


the  storekeeper  we  took  our  grievance,  and  there 
we  came  on  another  aspect  of  that  plaintive  acquies 
cence  so  strong  in  the  woman.  Yes,  the  store 
keeper  admitted  with  instant  reasonableness,  the  in 
spector  was  right:  Foley  had  failed  about  the  bridge. 
"  I'll  haul  him  over,"  he  said,  full  of  sympathy  for 
the  woman.  And  he  would  haul  him  over.  And 
the  pier  would  lie  there  all  winter. 

If  the  people  could  feel  that  this  solicitude  of  the 
Estates  Commission  were  national,  it  would  bind 
them  to  the  government.  But  most  of  the  inspectors 
are  of  the  landlord  world,  ruling-class  appointees, 
well-meaning,  remote,  superior,  unable  to  read  be 
tween  the  lines.  And  so  Kerry  remains  with  the 
old  tradition  of  the  government,  suspicious  of  its 
intentions,  crediting  what  genuine  services  there  are 
to  the  race  of  native  officials  who  alone  have  the 
intuition  of  Kerry's  kind. 

They  want  army  recruits  from  Kerry,  to  defend 
the  Empire;  that  Empire  which  meant  landlords  and 
land  agents  and  rackrents  for  so  many  blind  and 
crushing  years.  They  want  those  straight  and  stal 
wart  and  manly  fellows  in  the  trenches.  But  Kerry 
knows  what  the  trenches  of  Empire  are  already.  It 
has  fought  starvation  in  them,  dug  deep  in  the  bogs 
between  sparse  ridges  of  potatoes,  for  all  the  years 
it  can  remember.  It  is  no  wonder  Kerry  cannot 
grasp  at  once  why  it  should  go  forth  now  to  die  so 
readily  when  it  has  only  just  grudgingly  been  granted 
a  lease  to  live. 


[  70] 


HENRY  ADAMS 

JblENRY  ADAMS  was  born  with  his  name  on  the 
waiting  list  of  Olympus,  and  he  lived  up  to  it.  He 
lived  up  to  it  part  of  the  time  in  London,  as  secre 
tary  to  his  father  at  the  Embassy;  part  of  the  time 
at  Harvard,  teaching  history;  most  of  the  time  in 
Washington,  in  La  Fayette  Square.  Shortly  before 
he  was  born,  the  stepping  stone  to  Olympus  in  the 
United  States  was  Boston.  Sometimes  Boston  and 
Olympus  were  confused.  But  not  so  long  after  1 838 
the  railroads  came,  and  while  Boston  did  its  best  to 
control  the  country  through  the  railroads  there  was 
an  inevitable  shift  in  political  gravity,  and  the  center 
of  power  became  Ohio.  It  was  Henry  Adams's  fate 
to  knock  at  the  door  of  fame  when  Ohio  was  in 
power;  and  Ohio  did  not  comprehend  Adams's  cre 
dentials.  Those  credentials,  accordingly,  were  the 
subject  of  some  wry  scrutiny  by  their  possessor. 
They  were  valid,  at  any  rate,  at  the  door  of  history, 
and  Henry  Adams  gave  a  dozen  years  to  Jefferson 
and  Madison.  It  was  his  humor  afterwards  to  say 
he  had  but  three  serious  readers  —  Abram  Hewitt, 
Wayne  MacVeagh  and  John  Hay.  His  composure 
in  the  face  of  this  coolness  was,  however,  a  strange 
blending  of  serenities  derived  equally  from  the  cos 
mos  and  from  La  Fayette  Square.  He  was  not 

The    Education    of    Henry    Adams,    an    Autobiography.     Boston: 
Houghton  Mifflin   Co. 


above  the  anodyne  of  exclusiveness.  Even  his 
autobiography,  a  true  title  to  Olympus,  was  issued 
to  a  bare  hundred  readers  before  his  death,  and  was 
then  deemed  too  incomplete  to  be  made  public.  It 
is  made  public  now  nominally  for  "  students  "  but 
really  for  the  world  that  didn't  know  an  Adams  when 
it  saw  one. 

For  mere  stuff  the  book  is  incomparable.  Henry 
Adams  had  the  advantage  of  full  years  and  happy 
faculty,  and  his  book  is  the  rich  harvest  of  both. 
He  had  none  of  that  anecdotal  inconsequentiality 
which  is  a  bad  tradition  in  English  recollections. 
He  saved  himself  from  mere  recollections  by  taking 
the  world  as  an  educator  and  himself  as  an  experi 
ment  in  education.  His  two  big  books  were  con 
trasted  as  Mont-Saint-Michel  and  Chartres:  A  Study 
of  Thirteenth-Century  Unity,  and  The  Education  of 
Henry  Adams:  A  Study  of  Twentieth-Century  Mul 
tiplicity.  The  stress  on  multiplicity  was  all  the  more 
important  because  he  considered  himself  eighteenth 
century  to  start  with,  and  had,  in  fact,  the  unity  of 
simple  Americanism  at  the  beginning. 

Simple  Americanism  goes  to  pieces  like  the  pot  of 
basil  in  this  always  expanding  tale  of  a  development. 
There  are  points  about  the  development,  about  its 
acceptance  of  a  "  supersensual  multiverse,"  which 
only  a  Karl  Pearson  or  an  Ernst  Mach  could  satis 
factorily  discuss  or  criticize.  A  reader  like  myself 
gazes  through  the  glass  bottom  of  Adams's  style  into 
unplumbed  depths  of  speculation.  Those  depths 
are  clear  and  crisp.  They  deserve  to  be  investi 
gated.  But  a  "  dynamic  theory  of  history  "  is  no 
proper  inhabitant  of  autobiography,  and  "  the  larger 
synthesis  "  is  not  yet  so  domesticated  as  the  plebeian 

[  72  ]  „ 


idea  of  God.  That  Adams  should  conduct  his  study 
to  these  ends  is,  in  one  sense,  a  magnificent  culmina 
tion.  A  theory  of  life  is  the  fit  answer  to  the  super- 
sensual  riddle  of  living.  But  when  the  theory  must 
be  technical  and  even  professional,  an  autobiography 
has  no  climax  in  a  theory.  It  is  better  to  revert,  as 
Adams  does,  to  the  classic  features  of  human  drama : 
"  Even  in  America,  the  Indian  Summer  of  life  should 
be  a  little  sunny  and  a  little  sad,  like  the  season,  and 
infinite  in  wealth  and  depth  of  tone  —  but  never 
hustled."  It  is  enough  to  have  the  knowledge  that 
along  certain  lines  the  prime  conceptions  were  shat 
tered  and  the  new  conceptions  pushed  forward,  the 
tree  of  Adams  rooting  itself  firmly  in  the  twentieth 
century,  coiled  round  the  dynamos  and  the  law  of 
acceleration. 

Whatever  the  value  of  his  theory,  Henry  Adams 
embraced  the  modernity  that  gradually  dawned  on 
him  and  gave  him  his  new  view  of  life.  Take  his 
fresh  enthusiasm  for  world's  fairs  as  a  solitary  ex 
ample.  One  might  expect  him  to  be  bored  by  them, 
but  Hunt  and  Richardson  and  Stanford  White  and 
Burnham  emerge  heroically  as  the  dramatizers  of 
America,  and  Henry  Adams  soared  over  their  ob 
viousness  to  a  perception  of  their  "  acutely  interest 
ing  "  exhibits.  He  was  after  —  something.  If  the 
Virgin  Mary  could  give  it  to  him  in  Normandy,  or 
St.  Louis  could  give  it  to  him  among  the  Jugo-Slavs 
and  the  Ruthenians  on  the  Mississippi,  well  done. 
No  vulgar  prejudices  held  him  back.  He  who  could 
interpret  the  fight  for  free  silver  without  a  sniff  of 
impatience,  who  could  study  Grant  without  the  least 
filming  of  patriotism,  was  not  likely  to  turn  up  his 
nose  at  unfashionable  faiths  or  to  espouse  fashion- 

[  73  ] 


able  heresies.  He  was  after  education  and  any  cen 
tury  back  or  forward  was  grist  to  his  mill.  And 
his  faith,  even,  was  sure  to  be  a  sieve  with  holes  in 
it.  "  All  one's  life,"  as  he  confesses  grimly,  u  one 
had  struggled  for  unity,  and  unity  had  always  won," 
yet  "  the  multiplicity  of  unity  had  steadily  increased, 
was  increasing,  and  threatened  to  increase  beyond 
reason."  Beyond  reason,  then,  it  was  reasonable  to 
proceed,  and  the  son  of  Ambassador  Adams  moved 
from  the  sanctity  of  Union  with  his  feet  feeling 
what  way  they  must,  and  his  eye  on  the  star  of 
truth. 

So  steady  is  that  gaze,  one  almost  forgets  how 
keen  it  is.  But  there  is  no  single  dullness,  as  I  re 
member,  in  505  large  pages,  and  there  are  portraits 
like  those  of  Lodge  or  La  Farge  or  St.  Gaudens  or 
the  Adamses,  which  have  the  economy  and  fidelity 
of  Holbein.  A  colorist  Adams  is  not,  nor  is  he 
a  dramatist.  But  he  has  few  equals  in  the  succinct 
expressiveness  that  his  historical  sense  demands,  and 
he  can  load  a  sentence  with  a  world  of  meaning. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  phrase  in  which  he  denies 
unity  to  London  society.  "  One  wandered  about  in 
it  like  a  maggot  in  cheese;  it  was  not  a  hansom  cab, 
to  be  got  into,  or  out  of,  at  dinner-time."  He  says 
of  St.  Gaudens  that  "  he  never  laid  down  the  law, 
or  affected  the  despot,  or  became  brutalized  like 
Whistler  by  the  brutalities  of  his  world."  In  a 
masterly  chapter  on  woman,  he  summed  up,  "  The 
woman's  force  had  counted  as  inertia  of  rotation, 
and  her  axis  of  rotation  had  been  the  cradle  and 
the  family.  The  idea  that  she  was  weak  revolted 
all  history;  it  was  a  palaeontological  falsehood  that 
even  an  Eocene  female  monkey  would  have  laughed 

[  74  ] 


at;  but  it  was  surely  true  that,  if  force  were  to  be 
diverted  from  its  axis,  it  must  find  a  new  field,  and 
the  family  must  pay  for  it.  ...  She  must,  like  the 
man,  marry  machinery."  In  Cambridge  "  the  live 
liest  and  most  agreeable  of  men  —  James  Russell 
Lowell,  Francis  J.  Child,  Louis  Agassiz,  his  son 
Alexander,  Gurney,  John  Fiske,  William  James  and 
a  dozen  others,  who  would  have  made  the  joy  of 
London  or  Paris  —  tried  their  best  to  break  out  and 
be  like  other  men  in  Cambridge  and  Boston,  but 
society  called  them  professors,  and  professors  they 
had  to  be.  While  all  these  brilliant  men  were  greedy 
for  companionship,  all  were  famished  for  want  of  it. 
Society  was  a  faculty-meeting  without  business.  The 
elements  were  there;  but  society  cannot  be  made  up 
of  elements  —  people  who  are  expected  to  be  silent 
unless  they  have  observations  to  make  —  and  all  the 
elements  are  bound  to  remain  apart  if  required  to 
make  observations." 

Keen  as  this  is,  it  does  not  alter  one  great  fact, 
that  Henry  Adams  himself  felt  the  necessity  of  mak 
ing  observations.  He  approached  autobiography 
buttoned  to  the  neck.  Like  many  bottled-up  human 
beings  he  had  a  real  impulse  to  release  himself,  and 
to  release  himself  in  an  autobiography  if  nowhere 
else;  but  spontaneous  as  was  the  impulse,  he  could  no 
more  unveil  the  whole  of  an  Adams  to  the  eye  of  day 
than  he  could  dance  like  Nijinski.  In  so  far  as  the 
Adamses  were  institutional  he  could  talk  of  them 
openly,  and  he  could  talk  of  John  Hay  and  Clarence 
Kink  and  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  and  John  La  Farge 
and  St.  Gaudens  as  any  liberated  host  might  reveal 
himself  in  the  warm  hour  after  dinner.  But  this  is 
not  the  Dionysiac  tone  of  autobiography  and  Henry 

[  75  ] 


Adams  was  not  Dionysiac.  He  was  not  limitedly 
Bostonian.  He  was  sensitive,  he  was  receptive,  he 
was  tender,  he  was  more  scrod  than  cod.  But  the 
mere  mention  of  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  in  the  pre 
face  of  this  autobiography  raises  doubts  as  to  Henry 
Adams's  evasive  principle,  u  the  object  of  study  is 
the  garment,  not  the  figure."  The  figure,  Henry 
Adams's,  had  nagging  interest  for  Henry  Adams,  but 
something  racial  required  him  to  veil  it.  He  could 
not,  like  a  Rousseau  or  "  like  a  whore,  unpack  his 
heart  with  words." 

The  subterfuge,  in  this  case,  was  to  lay  stress  on 
the  word  "  education."  Although  he  was  nearly 
seventy  when  he  laid  the  book  aside  and  although 
education  means  nothing  if  it  means  everything,  the 
whole  seventy  years  were  deliberately  taken  as  devo 
tion  to  a  process,  that  process  being  visualized  much 
more  as  the  interminable  repetition  of  the  educa 
tional  escalator  itself  than  as  the  progress  of  the  per 
son  who  moves  forward  with  it.  Moves  forward 
to  where?  It  was  the  triumph  of  Henry  Adams's 
detachment  that  no  escalator  could  move  him  for 
ward  anywhere  because  he  was  not  bound  anywhere 
in  particular.  Such  a  man,  of  course,  could  speak 
of  his  life  as  perpetually  educational.  One  reason, 
of  course,  was  his  economic  security.  There  was  no 
wolf  to  devour  him  if  his  education  proved  incom 
plete.  Faculty  qua  faculty  could  remain  a  perma 
nent  quandary  to  him,  so  long  as  he  were  not  forced 
to  be  vocational,  so  long  as  he  could  speculate  on  "  a 
world  that  sensitive  and  timid  natures  could  regard 
without  a  shudder." 

The  unemployed  faculty  of  Henry  Adams,  how 
ever,  is  one  of  the  principal  fascinations  of  this  al- 

c  76  ] 


together  fascinating  book.  What  was  it  that  kept 
Henry  Adams  on  a  footstool  before  John  Hay? 
What  was  it  that  sent  him  from  Boston  to  Mont- 
Saint-Michel  and  Chartres?  The  man  was  a  capa 
ble  and  ambitious  man,  if  ever  there  was  one.  He 
was  not  merely  erudite  and  reflective  and  eman- 
cipatingly  skeptical:  he  was  also  a  man  of  the  largest 
inquiry  and  the  most  scrupulous  inclusiveness,  a  man 
of  the  nicest  temper  and  the  sanest  style.  How 
could  such  justesse  go  begging,  even  in  the  United 
States?  Little  bitter  as  the  book  is,  one  feels  Henry 
Adams  did  go  begging.  Behind  his  modest  screen 
he  sat  waiting  for  a  clientage  that  never  came,  while 
through  a  hole  he  could  see  a  steady  crowd  go  pour 
ing  into  the  gilded  doors  across  the  way.  The 
modest  screen  was  himself.  He  could  not  detach 
it.  But  the  United  States  did  not  see  beyond  the 
screen.  A  light  behind  a  large  globule  of  colored 
water  could  at  any  moment  distract  it.  And  in 
England,  for  that  matter,  only  the  Monckton  Mil- 
neses  kept  the  Delanes  from  brushing  Adams  away, 
like  a  fly. 

The  question  is,  on  what  terms  did  Adams  want 
life?  It  is  characteristic  of  him  that  he  does  not 
specify.  But  one  gathers  from  his  very  reticence 
that  he  had  least  use  of  all  for  an  existence  which  re 
quired  moral  multiplicity.  Where  he  seems  gravest 
and  least  self-superintending  is  in  those  criticisms 
of  his  friends  that  indicate  the  sacrifice  of  integrity. 
He  was  no  prig.  Not  one  bleat  of  priggishness 
is  heard  in  all  his  intricate  censure  of  the  eminent 
British  statesmen  who  sapped  the  Union.  But  there 
is  a  fund  of  significance  in  his  criticism  of  Senator 
Lodge's  career,  pages  418  and  on,  in  which  "the 

[  77  ] 


larger  study  was  lost  in  the  division  of  interests  and 
the  ambitions  of  fifth-rate  men."  It  is  in  a  less 
concerned  tone  that  the  New  Yorker  Roosevelt 
is  discussed.  "  Power  when  wielded  by  abnormal 
energy  is  the  most  serious  of  facts,  and  all  Roose 
velt's  friends  know  that  his  restless  and  combative 
energy  was  more  than  abnormal.  Roosevelt,  more 
than  any  other  man  living  within  the  range  of  notori 
ety,  showed  the  singular  primitive  quality  that  be 
longs  to  ultimate  matter  —  the  quality  that  medie 
val  theology  assigned  to  God  —  he  was  pure  act." 
Pure  act  Henry  Adams  was  not.  If  Roosevelt  ex 
hibited  "  the  effect  of  unlimited  power  on  limited 
mind,"  he  himself  exhibited  the  contrary  effect  of 
limited  power  on  unlimited  mind.  Why  his  power 
remained  so  limited  was  the  mystery.  Was  he  a 
watched  kettle  that  could  not  boil?  Or  had  he  no 
fire  in  his  belly?  Or  did  the  fire  fail  to  meet  the 
kettle?  Almost  any  problem  of  inhibition  would 
be  simpler,  but  one  could  scarcely  help  ascribing 
something  to  that  refrigeration  of  enthusiasm  which 
is  the  Bostonian's  revenge  on  wanton  life  force.  Ex 
cept  for  his  opaline  ethics,  never  glaring  yet  never 
dulled,  he  is  manifestly  toned  down  to  suit  the  most 
neurasthenic  exaction.  Or,  to  put  it  more  crudely, 
he  is  emotion  Fletcherized  to  the  point  of  inanition. 
Pallid  and  tepid  as  the  result  was,  in  politics,  the 
autobiography  is  a  refutation  of  anaemia.  There 
was,  indeed,  something  meager  about  Henry 
Adams's  soul,  as  there  is  something  meager  about  a 
butterfly.  But  the  lack  of  sanguine  or  exuberant 
feeling,  the  lack  of  buoyancy  and  enthusiasm,  is 
merely  a  hint  that  one  must  classify,  not  a  command 
that  one  condemn.  For  all  this  book's  parsimony, 

[  78  ] 


for  all  its  psychological  silences  and  timidities,  it  is 
an  original  contribution,  transcending  caste  and  class, 
combining  true  mind  and  matter.  Compare  its  com 
ment  on  education  to  the  comment  of  Joan  and  Peter 
—  Henry  Adams  is  to  H.  G.  Wells  as  triangulation 
to  tape-measuring.  That  profundity  of  relations 
which  goes  by  the  name  of  understanding  was  part 
of  his  very  nature.  Unlike  H.  G.  Wells,  he  was  in 
capable  of  cant.  He  had  no  demagoguery,  no  mob- 
oratory,  no  rhetoric.  This  enclosed  him  in  himself 
to  a  dangerous  degree,  bordered  him  on  priggish- 
ness  and  on  egoism.  But  he  had  too  much  quality 
to  succumb  to  these  diseases  of  the  sedentary  soul. 
He  survives,  and  with  greatness. 


[  79] 


THE  AGE  OF  INNOCENCE 

SWEET  and  wild,  if  you  like,  the  first  airs  of 
spring,  sweeter  than  anything  in  later  days;  but 
when  we  make  an  analogy  between  spring  and 
youth  and  believe  that  the  enchantment  of  one  is 
the  enchantment  of  the  other,  are  we  not  dreaming 
a  dream? 

Youth,  like  spring,  taunts  the  person  who  is  not 
a  poet.  Just  because  it  is  formative  and  fugitive 
it  evokes  imagination;  it  has  a  bloom  too  momentary 
to  be  self-conscious,  vanished  almost  as  soon  as  it 
is  seen.  In  boys  as  well  as  girls  this  beauty  discloses 
itself.  It  is  a  delicacy  as  tender  as  the  first  green 
leaf,  an  innocence  like  the  shimmering  dawn, 
"  brightness  of  azure,  clouds  of  fragrance,  a  tinkle 
of  falling  water  and  singing  birds."  People  feel 
this  when  they  accept  youth  as  immaculate  and  heed 
its  mute  expectancies.  The  mother  whose  boy  is  at 
twenty  has  every  right  to  feel  he  is  idyllic,  to  think 
that  youth  has  the  air  of  spring  about  it,  that  spring 
is  the  morning  of  the  gods.  Youth  is  so  often 
handsome  and  straight  and  fearless;  it  has  its  mys 
terious  silences  —  its  beings  are  beings  of  clear  fire 
in  high  spaces,  kin  with  the  naked  stars.  Yet  there 
is  in  it  something  not  less  fiery  which  is  far  more 
human.  Youth  is  also  a  Columbus  with  mutineers 
on  board. 

As  one  grows  older  one  is  less  impatient  of  the 
[  80] 


supposition  that  innocence  actually  exists.  It  ex 
ists,  even  though  mothers  may  not  properly  interpret 
it  for  boys.  Its  sudden  shattering  is  a  barbarism 
which  time  may  not  easily  heal.  But  in  reality  youth 
is  neither  innocence  nor  experience.  It  is  a  duel 
between  innocence  and  experience,  with  the  attain 
ments  of  experience  guarded  from  older  gaze.  Hu 
man  beings  take  their  contemporaries  for  granted, 
no  one  else:  and  neither  teachers  nor  superiors  nor 
even  parents  find  it  easy  to  penetrate  the  veil  that 
innocence  and  ignorance  are  supposed  to  draw 
around  youth. 

If  youth  has  borrowed  the  suppositions  about  its 
own  innocence,  the  coming  of  experience  is  all  the 
more  painful.  The  process  of  change  is  seldom 
serene,  especially  if  there  is  eagerness  or  originality. 
The  impressionable  and  histrionic  youth  has  inces 
sant  disappointment  in  trying  misfit  spiritual  gar 
ments.  The  undisciplined  faculty  of  make-believe, 
which  is  the  rudiment  of  imagination,  can  go  far  to 
torture  youthfulness  until  a  few  chevrons  have  been 
earned  and  self-acceptance  begun. 

Do  mature  people  try  to  help  this?  Do  they 
remember  their  own  uncertainty  and  frustration? 
One  of  the  high  points  in  Mr.  Trotter's  keen  psycho 
logical  study,  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and 
War,  indicates  adult  jealousy  of  the  young.  Mr. 
Trotter  goes  beyond  Samuel  Butler  and  Edmund 
Gosse  in  generalizing  their  kind  of  youthful  ex 
perience.  He  shows  the  forces  at  work  behind  the 
patronizing  and  victimizing  of  the  young. 

The  tendency  to  guard  children  from  sexual  knowledge 
and  experience  seems  to  be  truly  universal  in  civilized  man 

[  81  ] 


and    to    surpass    all    differences    of    morals,    discipline,    or 
taste.  .  .  . 

Herd  instinct,  invariably  siding  with  the  majority  and  the 
ruling  powers,  has  always  added  its  influence  to  the  side  of 
age  and  given  a  very  distinctly  perceptible  bias  to  history, 
proverbial  wisdom,  and  folklore  against  youth  and  confidence 
and  enterprise  and  in  favor  of  age  and  caution,  the  immem 
orial  wisdom  of  the  past,  and  even  the  toothless  mumbling 
of  senile  decay. 

The  day  will  come  when  our  present  barbaric  at 
titude  toward  youth  will  be  altered.  Before  it  can 
be  altered,  however,  we  must  completely  revise  our 
conventions  of  innocence.  Youth  is  no  more  cer 
tainly  innocent  than  it  is  certainly  happy,  and  the 
conspiracy  of  silence  that  surrounds  youth  is  not 
to  be  justified  on  any  ground  of  over-impression- 
ableness.  Innocence,  besides,  can  last  too  long. 
Every  one  has  pitied  stale  innocence.  If  a  New  York 
child  of  ten  becomes  delirious,  his  ravings  may  quite 
easily  be  shocking  to  older  people.  Already,  with 
out  any  particular  viciousness  or  precocity,  he  has 
accumulated  a  huge  number  of  undesirable  impres 
sions,  and  shoved  them  under  the  surface  of  his 
mind.  What,  then,  to  do?  The  air  of  spring  that 
is  about  him  need  not  mislead  his  guardians.  They 
may  as  well  accept  him  as  a  ripe  candidate  for  a 
naughty  world.  Repression,  in  other  words,  is  only 
one  agent  of  innocence,  and  not  the  most  successful. 
Certainly  not  the  most  successful  for  domesticating 
youth  in  the  sphere  that  men  and  women  consider 
fit  to  be  occupied.  If  youth  is  invited  to  remain 
innocent  long  after  it  recognizes  the  example  and 
feels  the  impulses  of  its  elders,  the  invitation  will  go 
unaccepted.  Youth  cannot  read  the  newspapers  or 

[  82  ] 


see  the  moving  pictures  without  realizing  a  dis 
crepancy  between  conduct  and  precept,  which  is  one 
hint  to  precept  to  take  off  its  bib. 

This  knowingness  is  not  quite  what  it  seems  to 
be.  Youth  is  ne\7er  so  young  as  when  experienced. 
But  those  who  must  deal  with  it  cannot  lose  by  mak 
ing  it  more  articulate,  by  saving  it  from  the  silly 
adult  exclusions  of  jealousy  and  pride.  For  this 
jealousy  and  pride  continually  operates  against 
youth  in  the  name  of  dignity  and  discipline.  And 
so  the  fiction  of  happy  youth  is  favored,  the  fiction 
that  portrays  youth  as  the  spring  time  of  the  spirit; 
that  pipes  a  song  about  a  lamb,  and  leads  the  lamb 
to  slaughter. 


THE  IRISH  REVOLT 

"  It  may  be  a  good  thing  to  forget  and  forgive ;  but  it 
is  altogether  too  easy  a  trick  to  forget  and  be  forgiven." — 
G.  K.  Chesterton  in  The  Crimes  of  England,  1916. 

W  HEN  a  rebellion  has  failed  men  say  it  was 
wicked  or  foolish.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  wickedness 
and  folly  to  judge  in  these  terms.  If  men  rise 
against  authority  the  measure  of  their  act  cannot 
be  loyalty  or  prudence.  It  is  the  character  of  the 
authority  against  which  men  revolt  that  must  shape 
one's  mind.  No  free  man  sets  an  ultimate  value  on 
his  life.  No  free  man  sets  an  ultimate  sanction 
on  authority.  Is  it  just  authority,  representative, 
tolerable?  The  only  revolt  that  is  wicked  or  foolish 
is  the  revolt  against  reasonable  or  tolerable  author 
ity.  If  authority  is  not  livable,  revolt  is  a  thou 
sand  times  justified. 

The  Irish  rebellion  was  not  prudent.  Its  im 
prudence  did  not  weigh  with  the  men  who  took  to 
arms.  Had  hope  inspired  them,  they  would  have 
been  utterly  insane.  But  hope  did  not  inspire  them. 
They  longed  for  success;  they  risked  and  expected 
death.  The  only  consequence  to  us,  wrote  Padraic 
Pearse  before  action,  is  that  some  of  us  may  be 
launched  into  eternity.  :'  But  who  are  we,  that  we 
should  hesitate  to  die  for  Ireland?  Are  not  the 
claims  of  Ireland  greater  on  us  than  any  personal 

[  84  ] 


ones?  Is  it  fear  that  deters  us  from  such  an  enter 
prise?  Away  with  such  fears.  Cowards  die  many 
times,  the  brave  only  die  once."  To  strike  a  de 
cisive  blow  was  the  aspiration  of  the  Irish  rebels. 
But  decisive  or  not,  they  made  up  their  minds  to 
take  action  before  the  government  succeeded  in  at 
taching  all  their  arms. 

In  this  rebellion  there  was  no  chance  of  material 
victory.  Pearse,  MacDonagh,  Connolly,  Clark, 
Plunkett,  O'Rahilly,  O'Hanrahan,  Daly,  Hobson, 
Casement,  could  only  hope  against  hope.  But  their 
essential  objective  was  not  a  soldiery.  It  was  an 
idea,  the  idea  of  unprotested  English  authority  in 
Ireland.  It  was  to  protest  against  the  Irish  nation's 
remaining  a  Crown  Colony  of  the  British  Empire 
that  these  men  raised  their  republican  standard  and 
under  it  shed  their  blood.  In  the  first  process  of  that 
revolt  few  of  them  were  immediately  sacrificed. 
Their  fight  was  well  planned.  They  made  the  most 
of  their  brief  hour.  But  when  they  were  captured 
the  authority  they  had  opposed  fulfilled  their  expecta 
tions  to  the  utmost.  Before  three  army  officers, 
without  a  legal  defender,  each  of  the  leaders  was 
condemned  by  court-martial.  Their  rebellion  had 
been  open.  Their  guilt  was  known  and  granted. 
They  met,  as  they  expected  to  meet,  death. 

The  insurrection  in  Ireland  is  ended.  A  cold 
tribunal  has  finished  by  piecework  the  task  that  the 
soldiers  began.  The  British  Empire  is  still  dominant 
in  Dublin.  But  ruthless  and  remorseless  behavior 
sharpens  the  issue  between  authority  and  rebellion. 
Even  men  who  naturally  condemn  disorder  feel  im 
pelled  to  scrutinize  the  authority  which  could  deliber 
ately  dispense  such  doom.  If  that  authority  de- 


served  respect  in  Ireland,  if  it  stood  for  justice  and 
the  maintenance  of  right,  its  exaction  of  the  pound 
of  flesh  cannot  be  questioned.  It  does  not  represent 
"  frightfulness."  It  represents  stern  justice.  Its 
hand  should  be  universally  upheld.  But  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  English  authority  did  not  deserve  re 
spect  in  Ireland,  if  it  had  forfeited  its  claims  on  these 
Irishmen,  then  there  is  something  to  be  made  known 
and  said  about  the  way  in  which  this  Empire  can 
abuse  its  power. 

Between  the  Irish  people  and  English  authority, 
as  every  one  knows,  there  has  been  an  interminable 
struggle.  A  tolerable  solution  of  this  contest  has 
only  recently  seemed  in  sight.  The  military  neces 
sity  of  England  has  of  itself  precluded  one  solution, 
the  complete  independence  of  Ireland.  The  desire 
for  self-government  in  Ireland  has  opposed  another 
solution,  complete  acquiescence  in  the  union.  Be 
tween  these  two  goals  the  struggle  has  raged  bit 
terly.  But  human  beings  cannot  live  forever  in 
profitless  conflict.  After  many  years  the  majority 
of  the  English  people  took  up  and  ratified  the  Irish 
claims  to  self-government.  In  spite  of  the  conserv 
ative  element  in  England  and  the  British  element  in 
Ireland,  the  modus  vivendi  of  home  rule  was  ar 
ranged.  It  is  the  fate  of  this  modus  vivendi,  ac 
cepted  by  the  majority  of  Irishmen  as  a  reasonable 
commutation  of  their  claims,  that  explains  the  recent 
insurrection.  These  men  who  are  dead  were  once 
for  the  most  part  Home  Rulers.  Their  rebellion 
came  about  as  a  sequel  to  the  unjust  and  dishonest 
handling  of  home  rule. 

For  thirty-five  years  home  rule  has  been  an  issue 
in  Great  Britain.  The  majority  of  the  British  peo- 

[  86  ] 


pie  supported  Gladstone  during  many  home  rule 
sessions.  The  lower  house  of  Parliament  repeatedly 
passed  the  measure.  The  House  of  Lords,  however, 
turned  a  face  of  stone  to  Ireland.  It  icily  rejected 
Ireland's  offer  to  compound  her  claims.  This  irrec 
oncilable  attitude  proved  in  the  end  so  monstrous 
that  English  Liberalism  revolted.  It  threw  its 
weight  against  the  rigid  body  that  denied  it.  It  com 
pelled  the  House  of  Lords  to  accept  the  Parliament 
act,  its  scheme  for  circumventing  the  peers'  veto. 
Then,  three  times  in  succession,  it  passed  the  home 
rule  bill. 

Every  one  knows  what  happened.  During  the 
probation  of  the  bill  the  forces  that  could  no  longer 
avoid  it  constitutionally  made  up  their  minds  that 
they  would  defeat  it  unconstitutionally.  Men  left 
the  House  of  Lords  and  the  House  of  Commons  to 
raise  troops  in  eastern  Ulster.  These,  not  the  Irish, 
were  Germany's  primary  allies  in  the  British  Isles. 
Cannon,  machine  guns,  and  rifles  were  shipped  to 
Ireland.  Every  possible  descendant  of  the  im 
planted  settlers  of  Ireland  was  rallied.  Large  num 
bers  were  openly  recruited  and  armed.  The  Ulster 
leaders  pleaded  they  were  loyal,  but  they  insisted 
that  the  Liberals  of  England  did  not  and  could  not 
speak  for  the  Empire.  The  only  English  authority 
they  recognized  was  an  authority  like-minded  to 
themselves.  Lord  Northcliffe  joined  with  Lord 
Londonderry  and  Lord  Abercorn  and  Lord  Wil- 
loughby  de  Broke  and  Lord  Roberts  and  Sir  Ed 
ward  Carson  and  Bonar  Law  to  advise  and  stimu 
late  rebellion.  Some  of  the  best  British  generals  in 
the  army,  to  the  delight  of  Germany,  were  definitely 
available  as  leaders.  A  provisional  government, 

[  87  ] 


with  Carson  as  its  premier,  was  arranged  for  in 
1911.  The  Unionist  and  Orange  organizations 
pledged  themselves  that  under  no  conditions  would 
they  acknowledge  a  home  rule  government  or  obey  its 
decrees.  In  1912  the  Solemn  Covenanters  pledged 
themselves  "  to  refuse  to  recognize  its  authority." 
During  this  period  the  government  negotiated,  but 
took  no  action.  There  were  no  Nationalists  under 
arms. 

If  free  men  have  a  right  to  rebel,  how  can  any 
one  gainsay  Ulster?  It  was  the  Ulster  contention 
that  home  rule  would  be  unreasonable,  intolerable, 
and  unjust.  This  was  a  prophecy,  perhaps  a  natural 
and  credible  prophecy.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to 
debate  the  Ulster  rebellion.  It  was  a  hard  heritage 
of  England's  crime  against  Ireland.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  English  authority  refused  to  abandon 
the  home  rule  measure  and  in  April,  1914,  Mr.  As- 
quith  promised  to  vindicate  the  law. 

The  British  League  for  the  support  of  Ulster  had 
sent  out  "  war  calls."  The  Ulster  Unionist  Council 
had  appropriated  $5,000,000  for  volunteer  widows 
and  orphans.  Arms  had  been  landed  from  Amer 
ica  and,  it  was  said,  from  Germany.  Carson  had 
refused  to  "  negotiate  "  any  further.  His  mobili 
zation  in  1914  became  ominous.  The  government 
started  in  moving  troops  to  Ulster.  The  King  inter 
vened.  Mr.  Balfour  inveighed  against  the  proposal 
to  use  troops.  The  army  consulted  with  Carson. 
Generals  French  and  Ewart  resigned. 

About  this  period,  with  Asquith  and  Birrell  fail 
ing  to  put  England's  pledges  to  the  proof,  the  Na 
tional  Volunteers  at  last  were  being  organized.  Mr. 
Asquith  temporized  further.  At  his  behest  John 

[  88  ] 


Redmond  peremptorily  assumed  control  of  the 
Volunteers.  Their  selected  leader  was  Professor 
MacNeill,  a  foremost  spirit  in  the  non-political 
Gaelic  revival.  There  was  formal  harmony  until 
the  European  war  was  declared,  when  Mr.  Red 
mond  sought  to  utilize  the  National  Volunteers  for 
recruiting.  This  move  made  definite  the  purely  na 
tional  dedication  of  the  Irish  Volunteers. 

Four  events  occurred  in  rapid  succession  to  de 
stroy  the  Irish  Volunteers'  confidence  in  English  au 
thority.  These  were  decisive  events,  and  yet  events 
over  which  the  Irish  Volunteers  could  have  no  con 
trol. 

On  July  loth,  1914,  armed  Ulster  Volunteers 
marched  through  Belfast,  and  Sir  Edward  Carson 
held  the  first  meeting  of  his  provisional  government. 

On  July  26th,  1914,  the  British  troops  killed  three 
persons  and  wounded  thirty-two  persons  because 
rowdies  had  thrown  stones  at  them  in  Dublin,  sub 
sequent  to  their  futile  attempt  to  intercept  Irish 
Volunteer  arms. 

On  Sept.  1 9th,  1914,  the  home  rule  bill  was  signed, 
but  its  operation  indefinitely  suspended. 

In  May,  1915,  Sir  Edward  Carson  became  a  mem 
ber  of  the  British  Cabinet. 

These  events  were  endured  by  John  Redmond. 
He  had  early  accepted  a  Fabian  policy  and  put  his 
trust  in  Englishmen  who  shirked  paying  the  price 
of  maintaining  the  law  they  decreed.  The  more 
radical  men  in  Dublin  were  not  so  trusting.  They 
had  heard  Asquith  promise  that  no  permanent  divi 
sion  of  Ireland  would  be  permitted,  and  they  learned 
he  had  bargained  for  it.  They  had  heard  him 
promise  he  would  vindicate  the  law,  and  they  saw 


him  sanction  the  defiant  military  leader  as  com- 
mander-in-chief  and  the  defiant  civil  leader  as  a  min 
ister  of  the  crown.  With  the  vivid  memory  of  Brit 
ish  troops  killing  Irish  citizens  on  the  streets  of 
Dublin,  they  drew  their  conclusions  as  to  English 
honor.  They  had  no  impulse  to  recruit  for  the  de 
fense  on  the  Continent  of  an  Empire  thus  honor 
able.  They  looked  back  on  the  evil  history  they  had 
been  ready  to  forget.  They  prepared  to  strike  and 
to  die. 

Irishmen  like  myself  who  believed  in  home  rule 
and  disbelieved  in  revolution  did  not  agree  with  this 
spirit.  We  thought  southern  Ireland  might  per 
suade  Ulster.  We  thought  English  authority  was 
possibly  weak  and  shifty,  but  benign.  We  did  not 
wish  to  see  Ireland,  in  the  words  of  Professor  Mac- 
Neill,  go  fornicating  with  Germany.  When  our 
brothers  went  to  the  European  war  we  took  Eng 
land's  gratitude  as  heartfelt  and  her  repentance  as 
deep.  Our  history  was  one  of  forcible  conquest, 
torture,  rape,  enforced  subservience,  ignorance, 
poverty,  famine.  But  we  listened  to  G.  K.  Chester 
ton  about  Englishmen  in  relation  to  magnanimous 
Ireland:  "  It  was  to  doubt  whether  we  were  worthy 
to  kiss  the  hem  of  her  garment." 

All  the  deeper,  then,  the  shock  we  received  from 
the  execution  of  our  men  of  finest  mettle.  They 
were  guilty  of  rebellion  in  wartime,  but  so  was  De 
Wet  in  South  Africa.  There  seems  to  have  been  a 
calculation  based  on  the  greater  military  strength 
of  the  Dutch.  A  government  which  had  negotiated 
with  rebels  in  the  North,  which  had  allowed  the 
retention  of  arms  in  Ulster,  which  had  put  Carson  in 
the  Cabinet,  could  not  mark  an  eternal  bias  in  its 

[  90  ] 


judgment  of  brave  men  whose  legitimate  constitu 
tional  prospects  it  had  raised  high  and  then  in 
tolerably  suspended.  But  this  English  government, 
often  cringing  and  supine,  was  brave  enough  to  slay 
one  imprisoned  rebel  after  another.  It  did  so  in 
the  name  of  "  justice,"  the  judges  in  this  rebellion 
being  officers  of  an  army  that  had  refused  to  stand 
against  rebellion  in  Ulster. 

It  is  not  in  vain,  however,  that  these  poets  and 
Gaelic  scholars  and  Republicans  have  stood  blind 
folded  to  be  shot  by  English  soldiers.  Their  ver 
dict  on  English  authority  was  scarcely  in  fault. 
They  estimated  with  just  contemptuousness  the  tem 
per  of  a  ruling  class  whose  yoke  Ireland  has  long 
been  compelled  to  endure.  Until  that  yoke  is  gone 
from  Ireland,  by  the  fulfillment  of  England's  bond, 
the  memory  of  this  rebellion  must  flourish.  It  testi 
fies  sadly  but  heroically  that  there  are  still  Irish 
men  who  cannot  be  sold  over  the  counter,  Irish 
men  who  set  no  ultimate  sanction  on  a  dishonest 
authority,  Irishmen  who  set  no  ultimate  value  on 
their  merely  mortal  lives. 


A  LIMB  OF  THE  LAW 


here,"  said  the  policeman,  tapping  me 
on  the  chest,  "  Mrs.  Trotsky  used  to  live  up  here 
above  on  Simpson  Avenue,  in  three  rooms.  And 
then  see  what  happens  —  she  turns  up  in  Stockholm 
with  two  million  roubles. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  blame  her.  But  ain't  we  all  hu 
man —  Socialists,  Democrats,  Republicans?  All 
we  need  is  a  chance. 

"  I  admit,  Socialism  has  beautiful  ideas.  But  are 
they  practical?  That's  what  I  ask.  Now,  pardon 
me,  just  a  minute !  Just  one  minute,  please  I 
Socialism  is  a  fine  theory,  but  look  at  Emma  Gold 
man.  That  woman  had  seven  lovers.  Free  love. 
Yes,  many  a  time  I've  heard  them,  preaching  the 
children  belonged  to  the  state.  Here's  their  argu 
ment,  see,  they  say  that  a  man  and  a  woman  wants 
to  get  married  but  the  man  figures,  have  I  enough 
to  support  her?  and  the  woman  figures,  how  much 
has  he  got?  and  the  only  thing  for  them  to  do  in 
that  case  is  to  turn  the  children  over  to  the  state. 
Now,  I  ask  you,  is  that  human? 

'  You  say,  a  lot  of  these  women  in  limousines 
practice  free  love  without  preaching  it.  Oh,  I  don't 
deny  it.  And,  look't  here,  I'm  surprised  there  isn't 
more  bombs  at  that.  Right  here  on  the  Avenue  you 
see  the  cars  in  one  long  procession  all  day,  like  every 
one  was  a  millionaire,  and  three  blocks  over  you  see 

[  92  ] 


people  who  haven't  the  means  of  livelihood,  without 
a  shirt  to  their  backs.  I'm  a  public  offcer,  as  you 
might  say,  and  maybe  it  sounds  queer  what  I'm  go 
ing  to  say,  but  I'm  afraid  to  have  my  own  children 
on  the  steps  of  the  apartment  house.  I  takes  the 
night-stick  to  them  and  I  says,  *  Beat  it  out  of  here, 
don't  let  the  landlord  see  you,  or  he'll  raise  the  rent 
again.' 

"  You  said  it,  something's  rotten  somewhere. 
What  do  you  think  of  the  government  holding  back 
all  that  meat,  just  because  the  packers  want  it  fixed 
that  way,  and  plenty  of  people  on  the  Lower  East 
Side  there  willing  to  buy  it  all  up  —  and  at  good 
prices  too?  But,  no,  it  has  to  be  held  back  to  suit 
the  packers.  And  then  they  lower  the  price  a  little. 
Because  why?  The  government  lets  them  have  all 
that  meat  for  what  they  like. 

"  It's  the  same  way  with  the  ice.  Did  you  see 
what  they  done  ?  The  mayor  gets  them  all  together, 
to  prevent  them  boosting  the  price  on  it,  and  it's 
fixed;  they  can't  raise  the  price  this  summer  to  more 
than  five  fifty  a  ton.  They  wait  two  days  at  the  old 
price,  and  then  they  put  it  at  five  fifty.  Two  days 
they  wait,  that's  all. 

"  Of  course  this  is  the  best  government  in  the 
world.  I'll  tell  you  what  proves  it  —  all  these  for 
eigners  coming  over  here.  Look  at  that  soda-foun 
tain  man  there.  You  heard  him  talk  up  for  the 
Bolsheviki,  didn't  you?  Well,  he  hasn't  much  gray 
matter  in  here,  but  just  the  same  that  fellow  makes 
as  much  in  three  months  as  I  get  for  a  whole  lousy 
year.  Three  months,  and  he  hasn't  been  here  ten 
years.  And  my  people  been  here  two  hundred. 
But  these  immigrants  come  over  ignorant  and  un- 

[  93  ] 


educated,  and  only  down  in  Kentucky  and  Tennessee 
are  our  people  not  able  to  read  and  write.  I  hear 
down  there  they  are  regular  tribes,  fighting  each 
other  and  all  that.  Of  course  that  soda-fountain 
man,  he  couldn't  associate  with  lots  of  the  people  I 
go  with.  If  he  walked  in,  they'd  look  at  him  as 
much  as  to  say,  'Who  have  we  here?'  But  he 
rolls  up  the  coin  just  the  same. 

"  But  the  trouble  with  the  Russian  people,  I'll 
tell  you.  Why,  eighty  per  cent  of  them  can't  read 
or  write.  Now  I'll  tell  you  what  it's  like.  It's 
like  this:  the  Russian  people  is  like  a  dog  was  tied 
up  in  the  back-yard,  see,  and  then  he  was  let  loose 
and  he  run  wild  with  joy  all  over  the  place,  and 
then  it  depended  who  was  the  first  to  whistle  to  him, 
whee-whee,  and  Lenin  and  Trotsky  they  whistled, 
whee-whee,  and  the  Russian  people  came  right  to 
them.  Of  course  I  don't  think  it'll  work.  They 
want  to  do  away  with  money  over  there.  You  know, 
you  want  to  buy  a  shoeshine  and  you  give  a  man  a 
head  of  cabbage.  That's  impractical.  And  then 
again  the  government  can't  own  everything.  It's 
all  right  for  public  utilities,  but  you  take  and  try 
to  control  everything  and  what'll  happen?  It  can't 
be  done.  What  I  say  is,  let  a  man  earn  a  million 
or  so,  and  then  say  to  him,  anything  over  and  above 
that  million  we  take  away,  see?  And  when  he  has 
his  million  he  doesn't  go  on  trying  to  monopolize 
everything.  But  now,  you  have  all  these  unedu 
cated  people  around  here,  and  the  more  money  they 
earn  the  worse  they  are. 

"  I'll  tell  you.  Right  across  the  hall  from  where 
my  wife  and  me  live  there's  a  lovely  woman,  a  Jew 
ess,  one  of  the  nicest  people  you  could  want  to  meet, 

[  94  ] 


and  I'm  in  her  house  and  she's  in  mine  all  the  time, 
until  her  husband  comes  home.     But  he's  one   of 
that  kind,  you  know!     The  other  night  he  comes 
home  with  three  friends  and  he  says  to  me,  '  Say, 
Charlie,  come  on  down  to  Long  Island  with  us  in 
the  car  for  a  week.     I'll  pay  all  your  expenses!' 
'  You  will,  eh,'  I  says.      '  Now  I'll  tell  you  some 
thing.     That  sort  of  thing  don't  go  with  me.     In 
the  first  place,  you  know  I  can't  get  leave  to  be  away 
from  the  police  department  for  a  week;  in  the  second 
place,  you  know  I  can't  leave  rrfy  wife  here;  in  the 
third   place,    you   know   damn   well   I    can't    afford 
to   go   with  you.     I  know  your  kind!     You   have 
your  three  friends  here  and  you  want  them  to  see 
what  a  great  guy  you  are.     Well,  I'll  tell  you  what 
you  are,'  and  I  told  him.     Now  he'll  be  the  same 
if  he  has  a  million.     And  I'll  tell  you  another  kind 
that   hasn't    respectability.     No,    I    mean    decency. 
She  was  a  big  fat  woman  and  her  baby  was  crying 
here  the  other  day,  and  she  opened  her  dress  right 
there    and   leaned   down   to    feed   the    child.     You 
know,  just  like  that  statue,  I  forget  the  name.     And 
all   the   little   boys   rubbering   around.     That's   the 
class  of  people  you  have  to  contend  with  around 
here  in  this  place,  with  the  air  full  of  fish  guts  they 
throw  out  of  the  windows,  and  everything. 

"  But  the  German  ones  are  different.  Not  that 
I  want  to  praise  the  Germans  or  the  like  of  that, 
but  they're  self-respectful,  you  know.  It's  the  lack 
of  education  with  them  others  —  those  others. 

"  But  you  put  the  Socialists  in  power  and  what 
difference  will  it  make?  I'm  —  I'm  not  against 
Socialism,  I  want  you  to  understand.  But  there's 
human  nature !  " 

[  95  ] 


A  PERSONAL  PANTHEON 

long  ago,  in  the  Metropolitan  Magazine, 
Clarence  Day  shied  a  cocoanut  at  old  Henri  Fabre. 
Personally  I  had  nothing  against  Henri.  I  rather 
liked  him.  But  I  was  extremely  cheered  when  Clar 
ence  said  publicly,  "  that  old  bird-artist,  you  don't 
have  to  admire  him  any  longer."  Without  waiting 
for  further  encouragement  I  bounced  Henri  off  the 
steps  of  my  Pantheon. 

Have  you  a  little  Pantheon?  It  is  necessary,  I 
admit,  but  nothing  is  so  important  as  to  keep  it  from 
getting  crowded  with  half-gods.  For  many  months 
my  own  Pantheon  has  been  seriously  congested. 
Most  of  the  ancient  deities  are  still  around  — 
George  Meredith  and  Walt  Whitman  and  Tom 
Hardy  and  Sam  Butler  —  and  there  is  a  long  wait 
ing  list  suggested  by  my  friends.  Joseph  Conrad 
has  been  sitting  in  the  lobby  for  several  years,  hun 
gering  for  a  vacant  pedestal,  and  I  have  had  re 
peated  applications  from  such  varied  persons  as 
Tchekov,  R.  Browning,  J.  J.  Rousseau,  Anatole 
France,  Huxley,  Dante,  Alexander  Hamilton,  P. 
Shelley,  John  Muir,  George  Washington  and  Mary 
Wollstonecraft.  But  with  so  many  occupants  al 
ready  installed,  with  so  many  strap-hangers  crushed 
in,  it  has  been  impossible  to  open  the  doors  to  new 
comers.  My  gods  are  like  the  office-holders  —  few 
die  and  none  resign.  And  when  a  happy  accident 

[  96  ] 


occurs,  like  the  demolition  of  Henri  Fabre,  I  feel 
as  one  feels  when  some  third  person  is  good  enough 
to  smash  the  jardiniere. 

I  was  troubled  by  Woodrow  Wilson  for  a  while. 
Two  or  three  years  ago  he  swept  into  the  Pantheon 
on  a  wave  of  popularity,  and  there  was  no  excuse 
for  turning  him  out.  He  was  one  of  the  stiffest 
gods  I  had  ever  encountered.  His  smile,  his  long 
jaw,  his  smoothness,  made  him  almost  a  Tussaud 
figure  among  the  free  Lincolns  and  Trelawnys  and 
William  Blakes.  I  stood  him  in  the  corner  when  he 
first  arrived,  debating  where  to  put  him,  but  at  no 
time  did  I  discover  a  pedestal  for  him.  Young 
Teddy  Junior  helped  me  to  like  Woodrow.  So  did 
Mr.  Root  and  Mr.  Smoot.  So  did  Mr.  Wadsworth 
and  Mr.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge.  But  what,  after  all, 
had  kept  Mr.  Wilson  from  being  a  Republican? 
How  did  he  differ  intrinsically  from  a  Henry  Stim- 
son,  a  Nicholas  Murray  Butler,  a  Theodore  Burton? 
The  pedestal  stood  gaping  for  him,  and  yet  I  had 
not  the  heart  to  enthrone  him;  and  never  shall  I 
enthrone  him  now.  Now  I  look  upon  him  with  the 
flat  pulse  and  the  unfluttered  heart  of  a  common  and 
commonplace  humanity.  He  is  President,  as  was 
Taft.  So  is  he  impressive.  But  the  expectation  I 
had  blown  up  for  him  is  punctured.  He  would  have 
been  a  god,  despite  all  my  prejudice  against  his  styles, 
if  at  any  time  he  had  proved  himself  to  be  the  reso 
lute  democrat.  But  the  resolute  democrat  he  was 
not.  He  was  just  an  ordinary  college  president  in 
flating  his  chest  as  well  as  he  could,  and  he  has  to 
get  out  of  my  Pantheon. 

This  eviction  of  the  President  relieves  my  feelings 
like  a  good  spring  cleaning.  To  be  con-structive 

[  97  ] 


gives  me  pleasure,  but  not  half  so  much  pleasure  as 
to  be  de-structive,  to  cast  out  the  junk  of  my  former 
mental  and  spiritual  habitations.  A  great  many 
people  are  catholic.  They  have  hearts  in  which 
Stepping  Heavenward  abides  with  Dumas  and  East 
Lynne.  I  envy  these  people  and  their  receptive 
natures,  but  my  own  chief  joy  is  to  asphyxiate  my 
young  enthusiasms,  to  deliver  myself  from  the  bond 
age  of  loyalty. 

There  is  Upton  Sinclair.  I  was  so  afraid  I 
was  unjust  to  Upton  Sinclair  that  I  almost  subscribed 
to  his  weekly,  and  when  I  saw  his  new  novel,  Jimmie 
Higgins,  I  actually  read  it. 

"  My  best  book,"  Mr.  Sinclair  assures  the  world. 
If  that  is  really  the  case,  as  I  hope,  I  am  happily 
emancipated  from  him  forever.  He  is  something  of 
an  artist.  He  converts  into  his  own  kind  of  music 
the  muck-rake  element  in  contemporary  journalism. 
He  is  always  a  propagandist,  and  out  of  religious 
finance  or  the  war  or  high  society  or  the  stockyards 
or  gynecology  he  can  distill  a  sort  of  jazz-epic  that 
nobody  can  consider  dull.  But  if  one  is  to  act  on 
such  stimulants,  one  ought  to  choose  them  carefully, 
and  I'd  much  rather  go  straight  to  Billy  Sunday  than 
take  my  fire  water  from  Upton  Sinclair.  Once  on 
reading  his  well-known  health  books,  I  nearly  fasted 
nine  days  under  his  influence.  That  is  to  say,  I 
fasted  twenty-four  hours.  The  explosions  of  which 
I  dreamt  at  the  end  of  that  heroic  famine  convinced 
me  that  I  was  perhaps  a  coarser  organism  than  Mr. 
Sinclair  suspected,  and  I  resumed  an  ordinary  diet. 
But  until  I  had  a  good  reason  for  expelling  this 
uncomfortable  idealist  from  my  Pantheon  I  was  al 
ways  in  danger  of  taking  him  seriously.  Now,  I  am 

[  98 1 


glad  to  say,  I  have  a  formula  for  him,  and  I  am 
safe. 

Nietzsche  is  the  kind  of  sublime  genius  to  whom 
Upton  Sinclair  is  nothing  but  a  gargoyle ;  yet  the  ex 
pulsion  of  Nietzsche  was  also  required.  When  we 
used  to  read  the  New  Age  ten  years  ago,  with  Oscar 
Levy's  steady  derision  of  everything  and  anything 
not  Nietzschean,  I  had  a  horrible  sense  of  inade 
quacy,  and  I  started  out  to  read  the  Master's  works. 
It  was  a  noble  undertaking,  but  futile.  Slave  and 
worm  as  I  was,  I  found  Nietzsche  upsetting  all  the 
other  fellows  in  the  Pantheon.  He  and  William 
Blake  fought  bitterly  over  the  meaning  of  Christian 
ity.  Abraham  Lincoln  disgusted  him  with  funny 
stories.  He  was  sulky  with  George  Meredith  and 
frigid  with  Balzac  and  absurdly  patronizing  to  Miss 
Jane  Addams.  It  pained  me  to  get  rid  of  him,  but 
I  voted  him  away. 

This  Olympian  problem  does  not  seem  to  bother 
men  like  William  Marion  Reedy.  Mr.  Reedy  is 
the  sort  of  human  being  who  can  combine  Edgar  Lee 
Masters  and  Vachel  Lindsay,  single  tax  and  spiritual 
ism,  Woodrow  Wilson  and  Theodore  Roosevelt. 
He  knows  brewers  and  minor  poets  and  automobile 
salesmen  and  building  contractors  and  traffic  cops 
and  publishers,  and  he  is  genuinely  himself  with  all 
of  them.  He  finds  the  common  denominator  in 
machine  politicians  and  hyperacid  reformers,  and 
without  turning  a  hair  he  moves  from  tropical  to 
arctic  conversation.  He  is  at  home  with  Celtic  fair 
ies  and  the  atomic  theory,  with  frenzied  finance  and 
St.  Francis.  If  he  has  a  Pantheon,  and  I  believe 
he  has,  it  must  be  a  good  deal  like  a  Union  depot, 
with  gods  coming  in  and  departing  on  every  train 

[  99  ] 


and  he  himself  holding  a  glorious  reception  at  the 
information  booth.  I  am  sure  he  can  still  see  the 
silver  lining  to  W.  J.  Bryan  and  the  presidential 
timber  in  Leonard  Wood.  He  does  not  make  fun 
of  Chautauqua.  He  can  drink  Bevo.  He  has  a 
good  word  for  Freud.  He  has  nothing  against 
Victorianism.  And  yet  he  is  a  man.  This  recep 
tivity  puzzles  me.  A  person  with  such  open  sym 
pathies  is  called  upon  to  slave  in  their  service,  to  rush 
here  and  there  like  a  general  practitioner,  to  sleep 
with  a  watch  under  his  pillow  and  a  telephone  at 
his  head.  How  does  he  find  the  energy  to  do  it ! 
I  admire  it.  I  marvel  at  men  who  understand  all 
and  forgive  all,  who  are  as  omnivorous  as  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  as  generous  and  many-sided  as  Walt 
Whitman.  Think  of  those  who  have  a  good  word 
to  say  for  Bonar  Law!  It  is  less  democratic,  I  am 
sure,  to  run  a  hand-picked  Pantheon,  but  it  saves  a 
lot  of  much-needed  vitality.  Give  me  a  temple  on 
a  high  hill,  with  a  long  drop  down  from  the  exit. 


[  ioo] 


NIGHT  LODGING 

IT  is  sadly  inept,  not  to  say  jejune,  to  accuse  Maxim 
Gorki's  Night  Lodging  of  "  gloom."  Gloomy 
plays  there  certainly  are.  Twin  Beds  was  one 
of  the  gloomiest  plays  I  ever  saw,  and  what  about  a 
play  like  She  Walked  in  Her  Sleep?  That  de 
funct  comedy  was  as  depressing  as  a  six-day  bicycle 
race.  Night  Lodging  is  somber.  No  one  denies 
that.  But  to  believe  that  a  somber  play  must 
necessarily  be  a  "  gloomy  "  play  is  like  believing  that 
Christmas  must  necessarily  be  unpleasant.  .  It  simply 
isn't  true,  and  to  suppose  it  is  mentally  inelastic. 

But  the  trouble  is,  we  are  mentally  inelastic.  We 
say,  Ah  yes,  Strindberg,  the  woman-hater;  or  Ibsen, 
the  man  who  bites  on  granite;  or  Gorki,  the  Big 
Gloom;  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  these  artists  are 
simply  human  beings  who  have  got  beyond  the  com 
prehensions  of  the  fifth  grade.  This  is  itself  an  old 
story  in  criticism.  Only  the  story  has  to  be  re-told 
every  time  the  New  York  newspaper  critics  are  called 
upon  to  characterize  a  serious  drama.  With  a  regu 
larity  as  unfailing  as  the  moon,  the  New  York  critics 
reaffirm  their  conviction  that  a  play  concerning  dere 
lict  human  beings  must  of  course  be  squalid,  sodden, 
high-brow  and  depressing.  It  is  mentally  ruinous  to 
believe  and  assert  such  things,  yet  their  belief  and 
assertion  are  endemic  in  the  New  York  newspapers, 
like  malaria  in  the  jungle  or  goiter  in  the  Alps. 


Mr.  Arthur  Hopkins's  presentation  of  Night 
Lodging  at  the  Plymouth  Theatre  may  or  may  not 
be  better  than  the  presentation  some  time  ago  at  the 
German  theatre.  I  do  not  know.  I  never  saw  the 
performance  at  the  German  theatre  and  I  am  in 
clined  to  distrust  the  persons  to  whom  the  German 
theatre  is  not  so  much  a  thing  in  itself  as  a  stick 
with  which  to  whack  the  American  theatre.  But, 
better  or  worse  than  the  German  performance,  Mr. 
Hopkins's  is  to  the  good.  It  is  a  strong,  firm,  spa 
cious,  capable  performance,  resting  not  so  much  on 
a  few  pinnacles  as  on  a  general  level  of  excellence. 
It  is  presented  bravely.  Making  no  attempt  to 
sweeten  the  drama  to  the  taste  of  American  critics, 
it  allows  the  resolute  sincerity  of  Gorki  to  penetrate 
every  word  and  action  of  the  performance.  The 
result  is  undoubtedly  not  Russian,  even  if  every  actor 
in  the  cast  talks  with  a  semblance  of  foreignness. 
But  the  result  is  viable,  Russian  or  not.  A  sense  of 
human  incident  and  human  presence  is  quickly  se 
cured,  and  after  that  there  comes  a  stream  of  events 
wrhich  never  loses  its  reality  either  in  force  or  direc 
tion.  The  impact  is  tremendous.  Gorki  inundates 
one's  consciousness  with  these  human  fortunes  and 
misfortunes  of  his  tenement  basement.  And  while 
occasional  accents  slip  awry  in  the  tumult  of  his 
creation,  the  substance  of  his  story  finds  one  a  cor 
roborator  —  in  a  way  that  one  simply  never  corrob 
orates  depression  or  gloom. 

The  men  and  women,  who  come  together  in  this 
night  lodging  of  a  Russian  city,  are  of  the  emanci 
pated  kind  that  one  sees  on  the  benches  in  Madison 
Square.  They  are  recruited  from  the  casual  worker 
and  the  non-worker,  the  unemployed  and  the  unem- 

[    102    ] 


ployable,  the  loafers  and  the  criminals  and  the  broken 
and  the  declasse.  On  the  first  evening  when  one 
hears  their  voices  through  the  murk  of  the  ill-lit  base 
ment,  one  realizes  that  their  anarchism  is  bitter. 
They  grate  on  one  another,  sneer  at  one  another, 
bawl  at  one  another,  tell  one  another  to  go  to  hell. 
They  are  earthly  pilgrims  whose  burdens  have  galled 
them.  They  do  not  understand  or  accept  their  fate. 
They  are  full  of  self-pity.  They  are,  in  a  word, 
one's  tired  and  naked  self.  But  this  relaxed  and 
wanton  selfness  is  projected  by  a  Russian  who  keeps 
for  his  people  the  freshness  of  childhood  —  a  fresh 
ness  charming  in  some  cases,  horrible  in  others,  but 
always  with  a  touch  of  immortality.  How  they  re 
veal  themselves  in  this  nudity  of  common  poverty! 
A  woman  in  the  corner  is  coughing,  coughing.  She 
wants  air.  Her  husband  does  not  go  to  her.  His 
patience  is  snapped.  In  the  middle  of  the  room  lies 
a  man  half  recovered  from  a  drunken  brawl.  He 
aches  loudly  with  stale  liquor  and  stale  wounds.  In 
the  other  corner  a  youth  dreams  of  his  mistress,  the 
wife  of  the  lodging-house  keeper  —  a  mistress  from 
whom  he  pines  to  escape.  The  "  baron  "  sits  in  the 
shadow,  telling  of  his  high  antecedents,  to  weary 
sarcastic  listeners.  Elsewhere  the  broken  young  ac 
tor  repeats  the  medical  verdict  that  his  organism  is 
poisoned  with  alchohol.  "  You  mean  '  organon,'  ' 
shouts  another.  u  No,  organism.  My  organ 
ism  .  .  ."  And  so,  these  lives  sweep  round  and 
round  in  an  eddy  of  helpless  egotism,  the  sport  of 
the  winds  of  heaven. 

Then  arrives  a  leonine  old  man,  a  philosophical 
patriarchal  wanderer.  Quite  simply  he  fits  into  this 
life  of  the  basement,  but  unlike  the  rest  he  is  no 

[   103  ] 


longer  self-centered  or  self-afflicted.  He  walks  erect 
in  his  anarchism.  And  gradually  the  lives  of  the 
night  lodging  group  around  him.  He  sits  by  the  dy 
ing  woman.  He  talks  of  women  to  the  young  thief, 
and  talks  of  the  fine  life  in  rich  Siberia  that  is  beck 
oning  to  the  young.  He  stands  like  an  untroubled 
oak  in  the  gales  that  toss  the  others  hither  and 
thither.  Lord,  he  has  seen  life !  And  he  meets 
them  all  with  compassion,  a  man  among  children. 

He  goes.  His  presence  has  not  prevented  the 
lodging-house  keeper's  wife  from  driving  the  young 
man  to  kill  her  husband.  Nor  has  it  prevented  that 
flashing  devil  from  mutilating  her  sister  whom  the 
young  man  really  loves.  But  though  the  old  man 
departs  he  leaves  after  him  a  rent  of  blue  in  the 
clouds  that  choke  these  people's  lives.  One  after 
another  the  night  lodgers  question  life  afresh  under 
the  wanderer's  influence.  The  tartar's  arm  is  still 
smashed.  The  kopecks  are  still  scarce.  Nastia  is 
still  helpless.  The  baron  is  still  reminiscent.  The 
actor  is  still  alcoholic.  But  there  is  aroused  in  the 
night  lodging  the  imperishable  dream  of  happiness, 
and  no  one  is  ready  to  quench  it. 

Why  is  the  grave  and  beautiful  play  not  gloomy? 
It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  the  really  gloomy  play 
gives  a  naturalistic  version  of  life  which  the  spectator 
rejects  as  false.  Nor  is  it  enough  to  say  that  the 
falsity  of  a  sodden  play  consists  not  in  its  shadows 
or  in  its  discords  but  in  its  absence  of  the  vitamen 
of  beauty.  Many  plays  are  denied  truth  because 
their  truth  is  not  agreeable.  Many  plays  are  denied 
beauty  simply  because  their  beauty  is  a  stranger. 
Yet  we  know  that  truth  or  beauty  may  be  as  sable 
as  the  night,  as  icy  as  the  pole,  as  lonely  as  a  water- 

[  104  ] 


fall  in  the  wilderness.  The  fact  is,  gloom  is  the 
child  of  ingrained  ugliness,  not  the  child  of  acci 
dental,  conventional  ugliness.  It  is  the  people  who 
think  too  narrowly  of  poverty  and  failure  who  see 
Night  Lodging  as  depressing.  It  does  not  fail 
in  beholding  life.  It  is  not  poor  in  sympathy. 


[  105  ] 


YOUTH  AND  THE  SKEPTIC 

IN  1912,  I  think  it  was,  Mr.  Roosevelt  told  the 
public  how  Mr.  Taft  had  bitten  the  hand  that  fed 
him.  I  have  forgotten  Mr.  Taft's  rejoinder  but  it 
was  a  hot  rejoinder  and  it  led  to  some  further  obser 
vations  from  the  colonel.  Those  were  the  days. 
Nothing  but  peace  on  earth  and  good  will  among 
Republicans. 

About  that  time  I  happened  to  have  lunch  with  a 
most  attractive  young  man,  one  of  the  first  American 
aviators.  He  was  such  a  clear-cut  young  man,  with 
trusting  brown  eyes  and  no  guile  in  him.  And  said 
he  to  me,  "  But  how  can  these  things  be  true?  I 
can't  understand  it.  If  any  one  else  said  these  things 
you'd  pay  no  attention  to  them,  but  both  of  these  men 
are  fine  men;  they've  both  been  president;  and  if 
these  things  they  say  are  true,  then  neither  of  them 
can  be  such  fine  gentlemen.  I  can't  make  it  out,  hon 
estly."  And  he  looked  at  me  with  a  profundity  of 
pained  inquiry. 

What  could  I  say?  What  can  you  say  when  you 
meet  with  such  simple  faith?  It  took  years  of 
primary  school  and  Fourth  of  July  and  American 
history  to  build  up  this  conception  of  the  American 
presidents,  and  now  the  worst  efforts  of  a  president 
and  an  ex-president  had  only  barely  shaken  the  top- 
structure.  What  was  the  good  of  forcing  this  youth 
to  unlearn  everything  he  had  learned?  If  I  took 

[  106  ] 


away  his  faith  in  the  divine  office  of  president,  per 
haps  he  might  begin  to  lose  his  patriotism  and  his 
willingness  to  lay  down  his  life  for  the  flag.  Per 
haps  he  might  go  on  and  lose  faith  in  the  jury 
system,  the  institution  of  marriage,  the  right  of  free 
speech,  the  sacred  rights  of  property,  the  importance 
of  Harvard.  Faith  is  a  precious  but  delicate  endow 
ment.  If  I  unhinged  this  lad's  faith,  perhaps  he 
would  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  Martin  Luther, 
Voltaire,  Anatole  France,  Bernard  Shaw  and  Emma 
Goldman  —  the  u  Goldman  Woman  "  as  the  Ochs 
man  and  the  Pulitzer  man  and  the  Ogden  Mills  Reed 
man  call  her  in  their  outbursts  of  American  chivalry. 
I  wanted  no  such  arid  and  lonely  career  for  this 
splendid  young  man.  I  hated  to  think  of  his  wear 
ing  an  ironic  smile  like  Anatole  France  or  losing  his 
fresh  bloom  to  be  a  subversive  idealist  like  Eugene 
Debs.  Much  better,  said  I  to  myself,  that  he  should 
hug  Taft  to  his  bosom,  even  if  mistaken,  than  that  he 
should  repulse  him  and  face  life  without  him.  So  I 
gave  the  lad  soothing  words  and  earnest  though  in 
sincere  glances,  and  he  went  his  way  puzzled  but 
greatly  reassured. 

Now,  I  ask  you,  did  I  do  wrong?  You  may  say 
that  simple  faith  is  all  very  well,  but  a  man  ought  to 
live  in  the  real  world  and  know  his  way  around. 
Otherwise  he  is  incapable  of  handling  the  existing 
situation.  He  is  compelled  to  evade  uncomfortable 
facts.  Very  true.  Quite  right.  Exactly  so.  But 
is  it  better  to  be  able  to  face  facts  at  the  cost  of 
being  a  nerveless  skeptic,  or  to  be  something  of  a 
simpleton  and  yet  a  wholesome  man  of  action,  a  man 
of  will  and  character  and  pep?  What  is  the  good 
of  knowing  facts,  especially  unflattering  and  impalat- 

[  107  ] 


able  facts,  if  it  confuses  you  and  upsets  you  and 
undermines  everything  you've  been  brought  up  to  be 
lieve?  What's  the  use?  Voltaire  may  be  all  right 
in  his  way,  but  is  his  way  the  only  way?  Can  we 
all  be  Voltaires? 

If  I  stick  up  for  good  faith  in  the  character  of 
presidents,  I  know  that  there  will  be  a  bad  come 
back.  I  know  the  tricks  of  the  skeptic.  But  even 
if  my  opponents  use  their  ugliest  arguments,  am  I 
therefore  to  give  in  to  them?  I  refuse  to  admit 
that  there  is  nothing  else  than  to  destroy  a  beautiful 
faith  in  the  good  that  is  everywhere. 

What  the  skeptics  do,  of  course,  is  to  use  the  old 
argument  of  the  war.  They  say:  Yes,  your  fine 
brown-eyed  trustful  young  aviator  is  a  typical  prod 
uct  of  patriotism.  And  where  were  the  prime  ex 
amples  of  patriotism  to  be  found?  In  Germany. 
He  happens,  in  your  instance,  to  believe  in  the  divine 
office  of  the  presidents.  But  it  is  much  more  char 
acteristic  of  him  to  be  on  his  knees  to  the  Kaiser. 
Yet  consider  how  one-sided  you  are.  When  he  de 
clares  himself  ready  to  die  for  the  Kaiser  you  see  the 
joke.  You  see  the  joke  when  he  is  pouring  out  his 
reverence  over  the  Tsar  of  Russia  or  the  Tsar  of 
Bulgaria  or  the  King  of  Greece.  But  when  it  comes 
to  an  American  you  say,  "  Oh,  don't  let's  destroy 
this  beautiful  faith !  How  precious  it  is,  how  noble, 
how  commendable!  Hands  off,  please."  And  you 
act  in  the  same  way  toward  the  Constitution  or  the 
Supreme  Court.  It's  magnificent  when  the  Germans 
come  ahead  with  a  perfectly  good  new  constitution, 
model  1920.  But  we  must  stick  to  the  brand  of 
1789,  with  the  cow-catcher  added  in  1910.  Hail  to 
Our  Iron  Constitution!  And  hail  to  the  Old  Man's 

[  108  ] 


Home  down  in  Washington  where  they  hand  out  the 
uncontaminated  economics  that  they  themselves 
lisped  at  the  Knees  of  the  Fathers  of  Our  Country. 
Straight  from  the  source,  these  old  men  got  their 
inspiration,  and  they  are  a  credit  to  the  early  nine 
teenth  century.  You  think  we  exaggerate  your 
loyalty?  You  agree  that  the  simple  faith  of  young 
Germans  and  young  Turks  can  be  highly  dangerous, 
but  do  you  counsel  unquestioned  faith  for  young 
Americans? 

That  is  the  argument,  rather  ingenious  in  its  way; 
but  hardly  likely  to  fool  the  intelligent,  law-abiding, 
God-fearing  citizen.  Because  no  good  American 
could  admit  for  one  instant  that  the  cases  are  on  all 
fours.  America,  after  all,  is  a  democracy.  And 
when  a  young  man  starts  out  having  faith  in  a  democ 
racy  he  is  in  an  altogether  different  position  from 
Germans  and  Turks  and  Bulgarians  and  Soviet 
Russians  and  people  like  that.  A  democracy,  what 
ever  its  faults,  is  founded  in  the  interests  of  all  the 
people.  It  is  unquestionable.  Therefore  simple 
faith  in  it  is  equivalent  to  simple  faith  in  a  first 
principle;  and  you  cannot  go  behind  first  principles. 

That,  in  the  end,  is  the  trouble  with  the  skeptic. 
He  thinks  it  is  very  clever  to  question  the  things 
that  are  of  the  light  in  just  the  same  spirit  that  he 
questions  things  that  are  of  the  darkness.  And  of 
course  he  goes  wrong.  He  is  like  a  surgeon  who 
cuts  away  the  sound  flesh  rather  than  the  diseased 
flesh.  He  is,  in  the  evergreen  phrase,  de-structive 
not  con-structive. 

And  so  I  am  glad  that  I  did  not  seek  to  disillusion 
my  fine  young  aviator.  If  I  had  succeeded  in  dis 
illusioning  him,  who  can  tell  what  the  consequences 

[  109] 


might  have  been?  We  know  that  during  the  war 
there  were  grim  duties  to  be  performed  by  our  young 
men  —  towns  to  be  bombed  where  it  took  excessive 
skill  to  kill  the  men-citizens  without  killing  the 
women  and  the  children.  If  I  had  sapped  this  boy's 
faith  even  one  pulsation,  perhaps  he  would  have 
failed  in  his  duty. 

You  cannot  be  too  careful  how  you  lead  people  to 
rationalize.  In  this  world  there  is  rationalism  and 
plenty  of  it.  But  is  there  not  also  a  super-rational 
ism?  And  must  we  not  always  inculcate  super-ra 
tionalism  when  we  know  we  possess  the  true  faith? 


[  no] 


THE  SPACES  OF  UNCERTAINTY 

OR,    AN   ACHE    IN   THE    VOID 
[Inscribed  to  the  Little  Review"]' 

1  HE  floor,  unfortunately,  was  phosphorus,  so 
he  had  to  pick  his  steps  with  care.  But  at  last 
he  came  to  a  French  window,  which  he  opened,  and 
sprang  to  a  passing  star.  Star,  not  car.  He  was 
a  poet,  and  that  is  what  young  poets  do. 

He  had  a  pleasant  physiognomy,  as  young  men 
go.  Unformed,  of  course  —  perhaps  twenty  min 
utes  late  and  the  hall  only  two-thirds  full.  But  he 
was  no  longer  young  enough  to  hang  his  hat  on  the 
gas.  He  was  from  the  East  via  Honey  Dew,  Idaho, 
but  he  had  long  resided  with  an  aunt  in  Nebraska 
and  so  was  a  strong  Acutist.  He  wore  gray  shirts 
and  a  lemon  tie.  At  Harvard  —  he  went  to 
Harvard  —  he  had  opened  his  bean  with  consider 
able  difficulty  and  crushed  in  a  ripe  strawberry  of 
temperament.  So  that  he  could  never  stop  himself 
when  he  beheld  a  passing  star. 

The  motion  was  full,  with  significant  curves.  It 
made  him  a  little  air-sick  at  first,  but  he  preferred 
air-sickness.  He  made  no  compromise  with  the 
public  taste  for  pedestrianism.  After  a  few  days 
that  quickly  ceased  to  be  solar,  he  was  rewarded. 
He  came  to  Asphodelia,  a  suburb  of  Venus  on  the 
main  line. 

[  in  ] 


In  Asphodelia  the  poets  travel  on  all-fours,  kick 
their  heels  toward  Mercury,  and  utter  startling 
cries.  In  Asphodelia  a  banker  lives  in  the  menag 
erie,  and  they  feed  mathematical  instructors  through 
a  hole  in  the  wall.  This  new  participant  had  too 
much  of  the  stern  blood  of  the  Puritan  in  his  rust 
proof  veins  to  kick  more  than  one  heel  at  a  time, 
but  when  he  observed  a  gamboling  Asphodelian  of 
seventy  years  he  felt  a  little  wishful,  and  permitted 
himself  a  trifling  ululation.  The  local  cheer-leader 
heard  him  and  knew  him  at  once  for  a  Harvard 
Acutist,  and  there  was  joy  in  Asphodelia. 

A  year  or  so  sufficed  him.  He  grew  tired  of  sleep 
ing  in  the  branches  of  the  cocoanut  tree,  and  the 
river  of  green  ink  wearied  him.  So  when  the  next 
star  swung  around  he  slipped  away  from  his  pink 
duenna  and  crept  into  the  lattice-work  to  steal  his 
passage  home. 

Thought  slid  from  him  like  an  oscillant  leaf.  He 
hung  there  lonely,  in  his  Reis  underwear,  aching  in 
the  void. 

He  alighted  in  the  harbor  of  Rio.  When  he 
trans-shipped  to  New  York  in  ordinary  ways,  he 
prepared  his  Yonkers  uncle,  and  he  was  met  in  undue 
course  on  Front  Street. 

"  My  boy,"  said  his  uncle,  "  what  do  you  want 
me  to  do  for  you?  Speak  the  word.  You  have 
been  gone  so  long,  and  you  were  given  up  for  lost." 

"  Only  one  thing  do  I  want,"  confessed  the  for 
mer  Acutist. 

"  And  what  might  that  be?"  the  uncle  more  cir 
cumspectly  inquired. 

"  Take  me  at  once  to  the  great  simple  embrace 
of  wholesome  Coney  Island." 

[    "2    ] 


So,  clad  in  an  Arrow  collar  and  a  Brokaw  suit, 
the  young  poet  stepped  from  Acutism  on  to  the 
Iron  Boat. 

And  what  is  the  moral  of  this  tale,  mes  enfants? 
.  .  .  But  must  we  not  leave  something  to  waft  in 
the  spaces  of  uncertainty? 


[  113  ] 


WILLIAM  BUTLER  YEATS 

I  AM  sorry  now  not  to  have  treasured  every  word 
that  came  from  my  poet.  At  the  moment  I  disliked 
to  play  Boswell;  I  thought  it  beneath  my  dignity. 
But  artists  like  Arnold  Bennett  who  ply  the  note 
book  are  not  ashamed  to  be  the  Boswells  of  medioc 
rity.  Why  should  I  have  hesitated  to  take  notes 
of  William  Butler  Yeats? 

In  the  Pennsylvania  station  I  had  met  him,  as  his 
host  agreed,  and  I  intruded  on  him  as  far  as  Phila 
delphia.  I  say  intruded:  his  forehead  wrinkled  in 
tolerant  endurance  too  often  for  me  to  feel  that  I 
was  welcome.  And  yet,  once  we  were  settled,  he 
was  not  unwilling  to  speak.  His  dark  eyes,  oblique 
and  set  far  into  his  head,  gave  him  a  cryptic  and 
remote  suggestion.  His  pursed  lips  closed  as  on  a 
secret.  He  opened  them  for  utterance  almost  as  in 
a  dream.  As  if  he  were  spokesman  of  some  sacred 
book  spread  in  front  of  him  but  raptly  remembered, 
he  pronounced  his  opinions  seriously,  occasionally 
raising  his  hands  to  fend  his  words.  He  was,  I 
think,  inwardly  satisfied  that  I  was  attentive.  I  was 
indeed  attentive.  I  had  never  listened  to  more  dis 
tinguished  conversation.  Or,  rather,  monologue  — 
for  when  I  talked  he  suspended  his  animation,  like 
a  singer  waiting  for  the  accompanist  to  run  down. 

It  was  on  the  eve  of  The  New  Republic.  I  asked 
him  if  he'd  write  for  it,  and  he  answered  characteris- 


tically.  He  said  that  journalism  was  action  and  that 
nothing  except  the  last  stage  of  exasperation  could 
make  him  want  to  write  for  a  journal  as  he  had1 
written  about  Blanco  Posnet  or  The  Playboy.  The 
word  "  journalism  "  he  uttered  as  a  nun  might  utter 
"  vaudeville."  He  was  reminded,  he  said,  of  an 
offer  that  was  made  to  Oscar  Wilde  of  the  editor 
ship  of  a  fashion  paper,  to  include  court  gossip. 
Wouldn't  it  interest  Wilde?  "Ah,  yes,"  re 
sponded  Wilde,  "  I  am  deeply  interested  in  a  court 
scandal  at  present."  The  journalist  (devourer  of 
carrion,  of  course)  was  immediately  eager. 
"  Yes,"  said  Wilde,  "  the  scandal  of  the  Persian 
court  in  the  year  400  B.  c." 

It  was  telling.  It  made  me  ashamed  for  my  pro 
fession.  I  could  not  forget,  however,  pillars  of  the 
Ladies'  World  edited  by  Oscar  Wilde  which  I  used 
to  store  in  an  out-house.  Wilde  had  condescended 
in  the  end. 

Yeats's  mind  was  bemused  by  his  recollection  of  his 
fellow-Irishman.  Once  he  completed  his  lectures  he 
would  go  home,  and  a  "  fury  of  preoccupation  " 
would  keep  him  from  being  caught  in  those  activities 
that  lead  to  occasional  writing.  His  lectures  would 
not  go  into  essays  but  into  dialogues,  "  of  a  man 
wandering  through  the  antique  city  of  Fez."  In  the 
cavern  blackness  of  those  eyes  I  could  feel  that  there 
was  a  mysterious  gaze  fixed  on  the  passing  crowd  of 
the  moment,  the  gaze  of  a  stranger  to  fashion  who 
might  as  well  write  of  Persia,  a  dreamer  beyond 
space  and  time. 

"  And  humanitarian  writing,"  he  concluded,  with 
a  weary  limp  motion  of  his  hand,  "  the  writing  of 
reformers,  *  uplifters,'  with  a  narrow  view  of  de- 


mocracy  I  find  dull.  The  Webbs  are  dull.  And 
truistic." 

I  spoke  of  the  Irish  John  Mitchel's  narrow  anti- 
democracy  and  belief  in  the  non-existence  of  pro 
gress,  such  as  he  had  argued  in  Virginia  during  the 
Civil  War.  Mitchel,  he  protested,  was  a  passionate 
nature.  The  progress  he  denied  was  a  progress 
wrongly  conceived  by  Macaulay  and  the  early  Vic 
torians.  It  was  founded  on  "  truisms  "  not  really 
true.  Whether  Carlyle  or  Mitchel  was  the  first  to 
repudiate  these  ideas  he  didn't  know:  possibly  Mit 
chel  was. 

Yeats's  one  political  interest  at  that  time,  before 
the  war,  was  the  Irish  question.  He  believed  in 
home  rule.  He  believed  the  British  democracy  was 
then  definitely  making  the  question  its  own,  and 
"  this  is  fortunate."  I  spoke  of  Jung's  belief  in 
England's  national  complex.  He  was  greatly  inter 
ested.  Ulster  opposition  to  home  rule  he  regretted. 
"  The  Scarlet  Woman  is  of  course  a  great  inspira 
tion,"  he  said,  "  and  Carson  has  stimulated  this. 
His  one  desire  is  to  wreck  home  rule,  and  so  there 
cannot  be  arrangement  by  consent.  I  agree  with 
Redmond  that  Carson  has  gone  ahead  on  a  military 
conspiracy.  Personally,  I  do  not  say  so  for  a  party 
reason.  I  am  neither  radical  nor  tory.  I  think 
Asquith  is  a  better  man  than  Lloyd  George  —  less 
inflated.  He  is  a  moderate,  not  puffed  up  with  big 
phrases.  He  meets  the  issue  that  arises  when  it 
arises.  ...  I  object  to  the  uplifter  who  makes  other 
people's  sins  his  business,  and  forgets  his  chief  busi 
ness,  his  own  sins.  Jane  Addams?  Ah,  that  is  dif 
ferent." 

His  lectures  he  would  not  discuss  but  he  spoke  a 
t  "6  ] 


good  deal  of  audiences.  In  his  own  audiences  he 
found  no  one  more  eager,  no  one  who  knows  more, 
than  an  occasional  old  man,  a  man  of  sixty.  He 
was  surprised  and  somewhat  disappointed  to  find 
prosperity  go  hand  in  hand  with  culture  in  this  coun 
try.  In  the  city  where  the  hotel  is  bad  there  is  likely 
to  be  a  poor  audience.  Where  it  is  good,  the  audience 
is  good.  In  his  own  country  the  happiest  woman  he 
could  name  was  a  woman  living  in  a  Dublin  slum 
whose  nrnd  is  full  of  beautiful  imaginings  and  fan 
tasies.  Is  poverty  an  evil?  We  should  desire  a 
condition  of  life  which  would  satisfy  the  need  for 
food  and  shelter,  and,  for  the  rest,  be  rich  in  im 
agination.  The  merchant  builds  himself  a  palace 
only  for  auto-suggestion.  The  poor  woman  is  as 
rich  as  the  merchant.  I  said  yes,  but  that  a  brute  or 
a  Bismarck  comes  in  and  overrides  the  imagination. 
He  agreed.  "  Life  is  the  warring  of  forces  and  these 
forces  seem  to  be  irreconcilable." 

It  could  cost  an  artist  too  much  to  escape  poverty. 
I  spoke  of  the  deadness  of  so  much  of  the  work  done 
by  William  Sharp  and  Grant  Allen.  He  said  it  was 
Allen's  own  fault.  He,  or  his  wife,  wanted  too 
many  thousand  dollars  a  year.  They  had  to  bring  up 
their  children  on  the  same  scale  as  their  friends' 
children!  And  he  kindled  at  this  folly.  UA 
woman  who  marries  an  artist,"  he  said  with  much 
animation,  "  is  either  a  goose,  or  mad,  or  a  hero. 
If  she's  a  goose,  she  drives  him  to  earn  money.  If 
she's  mad  she  drives  him  mad.  If  she's  a  hero,  they 
suffer  together,  and  they  come  out  all  right." 

Phrases  like  this  were  not  alone.  There  was  the 
keen  observation  that  the  Pennsylvania  station  is 
"  free  from  the  vulgarity  of  advertisement";  the 


admission  of  second  hand  expression  in  Irish  poetry 
except  in  The  Dark  Rosaleen  and  Hussey's  Ode;  a 
generalization  on  Chicago  to  the  effect  that  "  courts 
love  poetry,  plutocracies  love  tangible  art."  Not 
for  a  moment  did  this  mind  cease  to  move  over  the 
face  of  realities  and  read  their  legend  and  interpret 
its  meaning.  Meeting  him  was  not  like  Hazlitt's 
meeting  Coleridge.  I  could  not  say,  "  my  heart, 
shut  up  in  the  prison-house  of  this  rude  clay,  has 
never  found,  nor  will  it  ever  find,  a  heart  to  speak 
to;  but  that  rny  understanding  also  did  not  remain 
dumb  and  brutish,  or  at  length  found  a  language  to 
express  itself,  I  owe  to  Coleridge."  But  the  Yeats 
I  met  did  not  meet  me.  I  remained  on  the  periph 
ery.  Yet  from  what  I  learned  there  I  can  believe  in 
the  sesame  of  poets.  I  hope  that  some  one  to-day, 
nearer  to  him  than  a  journalist,  is  wise  enough  to 
treasure  his  words. 


"  WITH  MALICE  TOWARD  NONE  " 

.LAST  night  I  woke  up  suddenly  to  the  sound  of 
bombardment.  A  great  detonation  tore  the  silence; 
an  answering  explosion  shook  it;  then  came  a  series 
of  shots  in  diminishing  intensity.  My  windows  look 
out  on  a  rank  of  New  York  skyscrapers,  with  a  slip 
of  sky  to  the  south.  In  the  ache  of  something  not 
unlike  fear,  I  thrust  out  my  head  to  learn  as  quickly 
as  I  could  what  was  happening.  No  result  from  the 
explosions  was  to  be  seen.  The  skyscrapers  were 
gaunt  and  black,  with  a  square  of  lost  light  in  a  room 
or  two.  The  sky  was  clean-swept  and  luminous,  the 
stars  unperturbed.  Still  the  shots  barked  and  mut 
tered,  insanely  active,  beyond  the  blank  buildings, 
under  the  serene  sky. 

I  heard  hoarse  cries  from  river-craft.  Could  it 
be  on  the  river?  Could  it  be  gun  practice,  or  was 
there  really  an  interchange  of  gun-fire?  A  U-boat? 
An  insurrection?  At  any  rate,  it  had  to  be  ex 
plained  and  my  mind  was  singularly  lively  for  three 
a.  m. 

Long  after  your  country  has  gone  to  war,  I  told 
myself,  there  remains,  if  you  have  sluggish  sym 
pathies,  what  may  fairly  be  called  a  neutrality  of  the 
imagination.  You  are  aware  that  there  is  fighting, 
bloodshed,  death,  but  you  retain  the  air  of  the  phil 
osophic.  You  do  not  put  yourself  in  the  place  of 
Americans  under  fire.  But  if  this  be  really  bom- 


bardment,  shell-fire  in  Manhattan?  I  felt  in  an  in 
stant  how  Colonel  Roosevelt  might  come  to  seem 
the  supreme  understander  of  the  situation.  An 
enemy  that  could  reach  so  far  and  hit  so  hard  would 
run  a  girdle  of  feeling  from  New  York  to  the  re 
motest  fighters  in  Africa  or  Mesopotamia.  To  pro 
tect  ourselves  against  the  hysteria  of  hatred  —  that 
would  always  be  a  necessity.  But  I  grimly  remem 
bered  the  phrase,  "  proud  punctilio."  I  remem 
bered  the  President's  tender-minded  words,  "  con 
duct  our  operations  as  belligerents  without  passion," 
and  his  pledge  of  sincere  friendship  to  the  German 
people :  warfare  without  "  the  desire  to  bring  any 
injury  or  disadvantage  upon  them."  Here,  with  the 
Germans'  shell-fire  plowing  into  our  buildings  and 
into  our  skins?  Here,  meeting  the  animosity  of 
their  guns? 

Becoming  awake  enough  to  think  about  the  war, 
I  began  to  reason  about  this  "  bombardment,"  to 
move  from  the  hypnoidal  state,  the  Hudson  Maxim- 
Cleveland  Moffett  zone.  The  detonations  were 
continuing,  but  not  at  all  sensationally,  and  soon 
they  began  to  shape  themselves  familiarly,  to  sound 
remarkably  like  the  round  noises  of  trains  shunting, 
from  the  New  York  Central,  carried  on  clear  dry 
November  air.  Soon,  indeed,  it  became  impossible 
to  conceive  that  these  loud  reverberations  from  the 
Vanderbilt  establishment  had  ever  been  so  distorted 
by  a  nightmare  mind  as  to  seem  gun-fire.  And  my 
breathless  inspection  of  the  innocent  sky! 

But  that  touch  of  panic,  in  the  interest  of  our 
whole  present  patriotic  cultural  attitude,  was  not  to 
be  lost.  It  is  the  touch,  confessed  or  unconfessed, 
that  makes  us  kin.  If  we  are  to  retain  toward 

[  120  ] 


German  art  and  literature  and  science  an  attitude 
of  appreciation  and  reciprocation,  without  disloyalty, 
it  must  be  in  the  presence  of  the  idea  of  shell- 
wounds  German-inflicted.  Any  other  broad-minded 
ness  is  the  illusory  broad-mindedness  of  the  smooth 
and  smug.  It  is  Pharisaical.  It  comes  from  that 
neutrality  of  the  imagination  which  is  another  name 
for  selfish  detachment,  the  temperature  of  the  snake. 

A  generation  less  prepared  than  our  own  for  the 
mood  of  warfare  it  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  — 
less  prepared,  that  is  to  say,  by  the  situation  of  our 
country  or  the  color  of  our  thought.  To  declare 
now  that  New  York  has  made  no  provision  for  the 
air-traffic  of  the  future  is  not  to  arouse  any  sense 
of  delinquency.  No  greater  sense  of  delinquency 
was  aroused  ten  or  fifteen  years  ago  by  the  bass 
warnings  of  military  men.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  Lord  Roberts  and  Homer  Lea  were  felt  to  have 
an  ugly  monomania.  In  that  period  Nicholas 
Murray  Butler  and  Elihu  Root  and  Andrew  Carnegie 
were  thinking  in  terms  of  peace  palaces.  Colonel 
Roosevelt  had  tiny  ideas  of  preparedness,  but  he  was 
far  more  busy  enunciating  the  recall  of  judges  — 
and  he  earned  the  Nobel  Prize.  Few  men,  even  two 
years  ago,  believed  we  would  be  sending  great  armies 
to  Europe  in  1917.  In  the  first  place,  men  like 
Homer  Lea  had  said  that  the  United  States  could 
not  mobilize  half  a  million  soldiers  for  active  serv 
ice  in  less  than  three  years.  And  in  the  next  place, 
we  still  felt  pacifically.  We  had  lived  domestic  life 
too  long  ever  to  imagine  our  sky  black  and  our  grass 
red. 

Because  of  this  mental  unpreparedness  for  war, 
this  calm  enjoyment  of  an  unearned  increment  of 


peace,  there  was  never  a  greater  dislocation  of  stand 
ards  than  our  recent  dislocation,  and  never  a  greater 
problem  of  readjustment.  For  England,  at  any 
rate,  there  was  a  closeness  to  the  war  that  helped 
to  bring  about  an  alignment  of  sentiment.  But  here, 
besides  the  discrepancies  in  the  entailment  of  serv 
ices,  there  are  enormous  discrepancies  in  sentiment 
to  start  with,  and  policies  still  to  be  accepted  and 
cemented,  and  European  prejudices  to  be  suppressed 
or  reconciled.  Misunderstanding,  under  these  cir 
cumstances,  is  so  much  to  be  looked  for,  especially 
with  impetuous  patriots  demanding  a  new  password 
of  allegiance  every  minute,  that  the  wonder  is  not 
at  how  many  outrages  there  are,  but  how  few. 

Most  of  these  outrages  fall  outside  the  scope  of 
literary  discussion,  naturally.  "  Let  the  sailor  con 
tent  himself  with  talking  of  the  winds;  the  herd  of 
his  oxen;  the  soldier  of  his  wounds;  the  shepherd  of 
his  flocks  "  ;  the  critic  of  his  books.  But  there  is  one 
kind  of  outrage  that  requires  to  be  discussed,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  culture,  if  only  because  there 
is  no  ultimate  value  in  any  culture  that  has  to  be 
subordinated  to  the  state.  That  is  the  outrage,  pro 
visionally  so-called,  of  mutilating  everything  Ger 
man;  not  only  sequestering  what  may  be  dangerous 
or  unfriendly  and  vindictive,  but  depriving  of  tolera 
tion  everything  that  has  German  origin  or  bears  a 
German  name.  The  quick  transformation  of  Bis- 
marcks  into  North  Atlantics,  of  Kaiserhofs  into 
Cafe  New  Yorks,  is  too  laughable  to  be  taken  seri 
ously.  The  shudderings  at  Germantown,  Pa.,  and 
Berlin,  O.,  and  Bismarck,  N.  D.,  are  in  the  same 
childlike  class.  But  it  is  different  when  an  Austrian 
artist  is  not  permitted  to  perform  because,  while  we 

[  122  ] 


are  not  at  war  with  Austria,  she  is  our  enemy's  ally. 
It  is  different  when  "  the  music  of  all  German  com 
posers  will  be  swept  from  the  programmes  of  sched 
uled  concerts  of  the  Philadelphia  Orchestra  in  Pitts 
burgh.  *  The  Philadelphia  Orchestra  Association 
wishes  to  announce  that  it  will  conform  with  pleasure 
to  the  request  of  the  Pittsburgh  Association.  The 
Philadelphia  Orchestra  Association  is  heartily  in  ac 
cord  with  any  movement  directed  by  patriotic  mo 
tives.'  '  It  is  this  sort  of  thing,  extending  intoler 
ance  to  culture,  that  suggests  we  have  been  surprised 
in  this  whole  matter  of  culture  with  our  lamps  un- 
trimmed. 

In  a  sense  we,  the  laissez  faire  generation,  have 
been  unavoidably  surprised  —  so  much  so  that  our 
"  proud  punctilio  "  has  been  jogged  considerably 
loose.  So  loose,  in  fact,  that  we  have  given  up  any 
pretension  to  being  so  punctilious  as  soldiers  used  to 
be.  It  used  to  be  possible,  even  for  men  whose 
hands  dripped  with  enemy  blood,  to  sign  magnani 
mous  truces;  but  science  has  made  another  kind  of 
warfare  possible,  and  the  civilian  population  of  the 
modern  State,  totally  involved  in  a  catastrophe  be 
yond  all  reckoning,  falls  from  its  complacency  into 
a  depth  of  panic  and  everywhere  believes  that  the 
enemy  is  inhuman  in  this  war. 

Were  such  beliefs  special  to  this  war,  hatred 
might  well  go  beyond  the  fervor  of  the  Inquisition, 
and  the  hope  of  exterminating  the  Germans  as  a 
people  might  be  universally  entertained.  But  no  one 
who  has  read  history  to  any  purpose  will  trust  too 
far  to  this  particular  emotionality  of  the  hour.  To 
say  this,  in  the  middle  of  a  righteous  war,  may  sound 
unpatriotic.  But,  if  hatred  is  the  test,  what  could 

[  123  ] 


be  more  traitorous  and  seditious  than  Lincoln's 
Second  Inaugural  Address:  "Both  read  the  same 
Bible,  and  pray  to  the  same  God;  and  each  invokes 
his  aid  against  the  other.  .  .  .  The  prayers  of  both 
could  not  be  answered  —  that  of  neither  has  been 
answered  fully.  The  Almighty  has  his  own  pur 
poses.  '  Woe  unto  the  world  because  of  offenses ! 
for  it  must  needs  be  that  offenses  come;  but  woe 
to  that  man  by  whom  the  offense  cometh.'  If  we 
shall  suppose  that  American  slavery  is  one  of  those 
offenses  which,  in  the  Providence  of  God,  must  needs 
come,  but  which,  having  continued  through  his  ap 
pointed  time,  he  now  wills  to  remove,  and  that  he 
gives  to  both  North  and  South  this  terrible  war,  as 
the  woe  due  to  those  by  whom  the  offense  came,  shall 
we  discern  therein  any  departure  from  those  divine 
attributes  which  the  believers  in  a  living  God  always 
ascribe  to  him?  Fondly  do  we  hope  —  fervently 
do  we  pray  —  that  this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may 
speedily  pass  away.  Yet,  ...  so  still  it  must  be 
said,  '  The  judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true  and 
righteous  altogether.'  With  malice  toward  none; 
with  charity  for  all;  with  firmness  in  the  right,  as 
God  gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let  us  strive  on  to 
finish  the  work  we  are  in;  to  bind  up  the  nation's 
wounds;  to  care  for  him  who  shall  have  borne  the 
battle,  and  for  his  widow,  and  his  orphan  —  to  do 
all  which  may  achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and  lasting 
peace  among  ourselves,  and  with  all  nations.'7  It 
is,  perhaps,  like  quoting  the  Lord's  Prayer.  And 
yet  it  is  the  neglected  wisdom  of  a  man  who  had 
gleaned  it  from  long  meditating  fratricidal  war. 

But,  you  may  say,  Prussia  has  always  been  outside 
humanity.     We  are  engaged  in  a  war  foreordained 

[  124  ] 


and  necessary,  a  natural  war.  A  war  inescapable, 
yes,  but  not  inevitable.  Let  the  plain  testimony  of 
hundreds  of  books  speak.  .  .  .  To  ask  for  such  dis 
criminations  as  this  is,  however,  scarcely  possible. 
It  is  too  much,  in  the  face  of  superstitions,  anxieties, 
and  apprehensions,  to  expect  the  attitude  of  culture 
to  be  preserved.  In  peace-time  we  are  allowed  to 
go  outside  our  own  state  to  enjoy  any  manifestation 
of  the  seven  arts;  and  such  violent  nationalism  as 
attacked  The  Playboy  of  the  Western  World  in 
New  York  is  at  once  called  "  rowdy  "  and  u  des 
picable."  But  in  time  of  war  it  is  part  of  its  mo 
rality,  or  immorality,  that  culture  must  be  subordin 
ate  to  clamor,  and  that  even  national  sculpture  must 
become  jingoistic,  making  railsplitters  neatly  respec 
table  and  idealizing  long  feet.  How  far  this  super 
vision  of  culture  goes  depends  only  on  the  degree  of 
pressure.  It  may  go  so  far  as  to  make  the  domina 
tion  of  political  considerations,  state  considerations, 
paramount  in  everything  —  precisely  the  victory  that 
democracy,  hoping  with  Emerson  that  u  we  shall  one 
day  learn  to  supersede  politics  by  education,"  has 
most  to  fear. 

It  is  in  war  itself,  with  its  enmity  to  so  much  that 
is  free,  that  one  must  seek  the  opposition  to  enemy 
culture,  not  in  the  culture  that  is  opposed.  Must 
one,  on  this  account,  think  any  peace  a  good  peace? 
To  do  so  is  to  show  an  immunity  from  the  actual 
which  is  not  to  be  envied.  It  is  only  necessary  to 
imagine  New  York  bombarded,  as  many  French  and 
English  and  Belgian  and  Russian  towns  have  been 
bombarded  since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  to  realize 
the  rush  of  resistance  that  is  born  in  mankind,  ex 
pedient  for  government  to  recruit  and  to  rally  to 

[    125    ] 


the  end.  But  for  the  man  who  has  partaken  of  dem 
ocratic  culture  this  "  end  "  involves  democracy.  All 
character  and  all  spirit  cannot  be  absorbed  in  the  will 
to  cure  the  homicidal  enemy  by  his  own  poison.  The 
only  course  open  to  the  man  who  is  still  concerned 
for  democratic  culture  is  to  remember  the  nobility 
of  Lincoln's  example  —  by  concentrating  on  the  of 
fenses  rather  than  the  persons  that  cause  the  mighty 
scourge  of  war,  to  avoid  the  war-panic  and  war- 
hatred  which  will  enrage  our  wounds. 


1 126 


WAR  EXPERTS 

"  War  is  not  now  a  matter  of  the  stout  heart  and  the  strong 
arm.  Not  that  these  attributes  do  not  have  their  place 
and  value  in  modern  warfare;  but  they  are  no  longer  the 
chief  or  decisive  factors  in  the  case.  The  exploits  that  count 
in  this  warfare  are  technological  exploits;  exploits  of  techno 
logical  science,  industrial  appliances,  and  technological  train 
ing.  As  has  been  remarked  before,  it  is  no  longer  a  gentle 
man's  war,  and  the  gentleman,  as  such,  is  no  better  than 
a  marplot  in  the  game  as  it  is  played." — Thorstein  Veblen  in 
The  Nature  of  Peace. 

ACROSS  a  park  in  Washington  I  followed  the 
leisurely  stride  of  two  British  officers.  Their  move 
ment,  punctuated  by  long  walking-sticks,  had  a  mili 
tary  deliberation  which  became  their  veteran  gray 
hairs.  They  were  in  khaki  uniforms  and  leather 
leggings,  a  red  strip  at  the  shoulder  marking  them 
as  staff  officers.  Amid  groups  of  loitering  nurses 
and  tethered  infants  and  old  men  feeding  pop-corn 
to  the  birds  they  were  as  of  a  grander  race  of  men. 
After  a  pang  of  civilian  inferiority  I  asked  who 
they  were  and  learned  that  one  of  them  was  simply 
a  Canadian  lawyer — and  that,  being  a  judge  ad 
vocate,  he  was  obliged  to  boot  and  spur  himself  in 
his  hotel  bedroom  every  morning  and  ride  up  and 
down  the  elevator  in  polished  leggings,  for  the  good 
of  the  cause.  Never  in  his  life  had  he  heard  a 
machine-gun  fired.  Never  had  he  flourished  any- 

[  127  ] 


thing  more  dangerous  than  his  family  carving  knife. 
On  inspection  his  companion  looked  similarly  martial. 
The  only  certain  veteran  in  the  parklet  was  a 
shrunken  old  pensioner  feeding  tame  robins  on  the 
grass. 

Part  of  the  politico-military  art  is  window-dress 
ing  of  this  description.  It  excites  the  romantic  pop 
ulace,  composed  of  pedestrians  like  myself,  and 
serves  to  advertise  the  colors.  It  suggests  a  leonine 
order  of  values  from  which  the  shambling  citizen 
is  debarred.  But  back  of  the  window-dressing,  the 
rhetoric  of  costume  and  medal  and  prepared  ova 
tion  and  patriotic  tears,  there  is  a  reality  as  differ 
ent  from  these  appearances  as  roots  are  different 
from  flowers.  If  I  had  ever  supposed  that  the  gist 
of  war  was  to  be  derived  solely  from  contemplating 
uniformed  warriors,  I  came  to  a  new  conclusion 
when  I  overheard  the  cool  experts  of  war. 

These  experts,  such  of  them  as  I  happened  to 
overhear,  had  come  with  the  British  mission  to 
America,  and  they  were  far  other  than  the  com 
mon  notion  of  lords  of  war.  The  most  impressive 
of  them  was  a  slight  figure  who  reminded  me  ex 
ternally  of  the  Greek  professor  in  Bernard  Shaw's 
Major  Barbara.  Before  the  war  he  had  been  a 
don  at  Cambridge,  a  teacher  of  economics,  and  he 
retained  the  lucid  laboratory  manner  of  an  expert 
who  counts  on  holding  attention.  It  was  not  in 
him,  as  it  is  in  so  many  older  pooh-bah  professors, 
to  expect  a  deference  to  personal  garrulity;  but  one 
gained  an  impression  that  no  words  were  likely  to 
be  wasted  on  vacuous  listeners  by  a  person  with  such 
steel-gray  eyes. 

From  London,  since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  this 

128 


concentrated  man  had  gone  out  of  Paris,  to  Rome, 
to  Petrograd,  to  join  counsel  with  various  allies  on 
the  science  of  providing  munitions.  It  would  never 
have  occurred  to  any  pork  packer  to  employ  this  fine- 
faced,  sensitive,  quiet-voiced  professor  to  work  out 
the  economic  killing  of  cattle.  Yet  almost  as  soon 
as  he  had  volunteered  in  England  he  began  on  the 
task  of  adapting  industry  to  slaughter,  and  there  was 
no  doubt  whatever  that  his  inclusive  mind  had  pro 
cured  the  quick  and  effective  killing  of  thousands  of 
human  beings.  It  was  a  joy,  strange  to  say,  to  listen 
to  him.  He  was  one  of  those  men  whom  H.  G. 
Wells  used  to  delight  in  imagining,  the  sort  of  man 
who  could  keep  cool  in  a  cosmic  upheaval,  his  mind 
as  nimble  as  quicksilver  while  he  devised  the  soundest 
plan  for  launching  the  forces  of  his  sphere.  There 
was  no  more  trace  of  priesthood  in  him  than  in  a 
mechanic  or  a  chauffeur.  He  deliberated  the  organ 
izing  of  America  for  destructiveness  as  an  engineer 
might  deliberate  lining  a  leaky  tunnel  with  copper, 
and  there  was  as  little  pretension  in  his  manner  as 
there  was  sentiment  or  doubt.  His  accent  was  cul 
tivated,  he  was  obviously  a  university  man,  but  he 
had  come  to  the  top  by  virtue  of  mental  equipment. 
"  Mental  equipment "  means  many  things,  but 
plainly  he  was  not  of  those  remote  academicians  who 
go  in  for  cerebral  scroll-saw  work.  He  managed 
his  mind  as  a  woodman  manages  an  ax.  The  curt 
swing  and  drive  and  bite  of  it  could  escape  no  one, 
and  for  all  his  almost  plaintively  modest  demeanor 
he  had  instant  arresting  power.  It  was  he  and  a 
few  men  like  him  who  had  made  it  feasible  for  ama 
teur  armies  to  loop  round  an  empire  a  burning  rain 
of  steel. 

[  129  ] 


This  master  of  munitions  was  not  the  only  school 
man  who  had  demonstrated  brains.  There  was  an 
other  professor,  this  time  the  purchaser  of  guns. 
He  had  come  to  his  role  from  holding  the  kind  of 
position  that  Matthew  Arnold  once  had  held.  A 
meager  figure  enough,  superficially  the  scholastic- 
dyspeptic,  he  had  shown  that  the  bureaucracy  of 
education  was  no  bad  beginning  for  ordering  a  new 
department  with  small  attention  to  the  tricks  of  mer 
chandise,  but  with  every  thought  as  to  technological 
detail.  The  conversation  that  went  about  did  not 
seem  to  engage  this  man,  except  as  it  turned  on  such 
engrossing  topics  as  the  necessity  for  circumventing 
child  labor.  For  the  rest  he  was  as  a  soft  silent 
cloud  that  gathered  the  ascending  vapors,  and  dis 
charged  itself  in  lightning  decision  which  made  no 
change  in  the  obscurity  from  which  it  came. 

Under  a  lamp  at  night  on  Connecticut  Avenue 
I  saw  one  late-working  member  of  the  mission  stop 
wearily  to  fend  off  American  inquisition.  A  training 
in  the  Foreign  Office  had  given  this  distinguished 
exile  a  permanent  nostalgia  for  Olympus  —  and 
how  Olympian  the  British  Foreign  Office  is,  few 
Americans  dare  to  behold.  The  candidature  to 
this  interesting  service  of  a  great  democracy  is 
limited  to  a  "  narrow  circle  of  society  "  by  various 
excellent  devices,  the  first  of  which  is  that  official 
conditions  of  entry  fix  the  amount  of  the  private 
means  required  at  a  minimum  of  £400  a  year. 
u  The  primary  qualification  for  the  diplomatic 
•service,"  says  one  friendly  interpreter  of  it,  "  is  a 
capacity  to  deal  on  terms  of  equality  with  consider 
able  persons  and  their  words  and  works.  Some 
times,  very  rarely,  this  capacity  is  given,  in  its 

[  130  ] 


highest  form,  by  something  which  is  hardly  examin- 
able  —  by  very  great  intellectual  powers.  Ordinar 
ily,  however,  this  capacity  is  a  result  of  nurture  in  an 
atmosphere  of  independence.  Unfortunately,  it  is 
scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  the  present  constitution 
of  society  provides  this  atmosphere  of  independence 
only  where  there  is  financial  independence.  In  a 
very  few  cases  freedom  of  mind  and  character  is 
achieved  elsewhere,  but  then  a  great  price,  not 
measurable  by  money,  has  to  be  paid  for  it  —  how 
great  a  price  only  those  who  have  paid  it  know.  .  .  . 
The  '  property  qualification  '  is  operative  as  a  means 
of  selecting  a  certain  kind  of  character;  no  readjust 
ment  of  pay  could  be  a  substitute  for  it.  Undoubt 
edly,  as  thus  operative,  it  imposes  a  limitation,  but 
the  limitation  imposed  is  not  that  of  a  class-prejudice 
or  of  a  mere  preference  for  wealth  —  it  is  a  limita 
tion  imposed  by  the  needs  of  the  diplomatic  service, 
and  those  needs  are  national  needs."  Out  of  such  a 
remarkable  background,  so  redolent  of  "  the  present 
constitution  of  society,"  my  exiled  diplomat  took  his 
weary  stand  before  prying  writers  for  the  press. 
They  wanted  to  know  "  the  critical  shrinking  point." 
They  wished  to  discuss  the  "  maximum  theoretic 
availability."  He  had  no  answer  to  make ;  he  merely 
made  diplomatic  moan.  In  the  heavy  dispatch  box 
that  he  set  at  his  feet  there  were  undoubtedly 
treasured  figures,  priceless  information  for  Germany 
in  her  jiu  jitsu  of  the  sea.  That  dispatch  box 
might  have  been  solid  metal  for  any  effect  it  had  on 
the  conversation.  He  was  a  kind  of  expert  who 
took  interrogation  with  pallid  mournfulness;  who 
punctuated  silence  with,  "  Look  here,  you've  got 
hold  of  absolutely  the  wrong  man.  .  .  .  Hanged  if 


I    know.  .  .  .  My    dear    sir,    I    haven't    the    very 
faintest  idea." 

And  yet  this  member  of  a  caste  was  only  coming 
through  because  he  too  was  paying  a  technological 
price.  Wheat  and  nitrate  and  ore  and  rubber  — 
there  was  nothing  his  country  might  need  which  did 
not  occupy  him,  staff  officer  of  vital  trafficking, 
throughout  numbered  nights. 

There  were  a  few  business  men  on  the  mission  — 
mighty  few  considering  their  lordship  in  times  of 
peace.  Most  of  the  dominant  figures  either  from 
Oxford  or  Cambridge,  there  was  one  other  intellec 
tual  who  stood  out  as  rather  an  exception  to  the 
prevailing  type.  He  was  an  older  man  whose  nature 
brimmed  with  ideas,  a  Titan  born  to  laughter  and 
high  discourse  and  a  happy  gigantic  effervescence. 
If  a  reputation  brayed  too  loudly  at  him,  he  named 
its  author  an  ass.  If  liberalism  were  intoned  to  him, 
he  called  it  detestable  and  cried  to  knock  the  English 
Nation's  head  against  the  Manchester  Guardian's. 
Yet  he  was  distinguished  from  most  of  his  colleagues 
as  a  radical  who  afforded  wild  opinions  of  his  own. 
To  the  organization  of  his  country  he  had  contrib 
uted  one  invaluable  idea,  and  each  problem  that 
came  up  in  turn  he  conducted  out  of  its  narrow  im 
mediate  importance  into  the  perspective  of  a  natural 
philosophy.  Not  fond  of  a  prearranged  system,  he 
irked  more  than  the  run  of  his  countrymen  at  the 
stuffiness  of  badly  bundled  facts.  With  a  great 
sweep  of  vigor  he  would  start  at  the  proposition  of 
handling  war  industry,  for  example,  on  a  basis  not 
inadequate  to  the  requirements;  and  out  of  his  run 
ning  oration  would  come  a  wealth  of  such  suggestions 
as  spring  only  from  a  cross-fertilizing  habit  of  mind. 

r  132 1 


These  are  a  handful  of  England's  experts  in  war 
time.  They  do  not  bear  the  brunt  of  the  fight,  like 
the  soldiers,  but  the  roots  of  the  flower  of  war  are  in 
just  such  depths  as  employ  these  hidden  minds. 


[  133  ] 


OKURA  SEES  NEWPORT 

was  sent  to  me  by  Jack  Owen,  a  friend 
of  mine  in  Japan.  Jack  said  that  Okura  was  tak 
ing  two  years  off  to  study  democracy,  and  would 
I  steer  him  around.  I  was  delighted.  I  offered 
Okura  his  choice  of  the  great  democratic  scene,  with 
myself  as  obedient  personal  conductor.  He  was 
very  nice  about  it  in  his  perfect  silver-and-gray 
manner,  and  he  asked  if  we  could  begin  with  New 
port.  I  suspected  a  joke,  but  his  eye  never  twinkled, 
and  so  to  Newport  we  went. 

The  dirty  little  Newport  railway  station  interested 
Okura.  So  did  the  choked  throat  of  Thames  Street, 
with  its  mad  crush  of  motors  and  delivery  wagons 
and  foot  passengers,  and  the  riotous  journey  from 
the  meat  market  to  the  book  shop  and  from  the 
chemist's  to  the  Boston  Store.  I  explained  to  Okura 
that  this  was  not  really  Newport,  only  a  small  sample 
of  the  ordinary  shopping  country  town,  with  the 
real  exquisiteness  of  Newport  tucked  away  behind. 
Okura  clucked  an  acceptance  of  this  remark,  and  our 
car  wove  its  difficult  way  through  the  narrow  lane  till 
we  returned  to  Bellevue  Avenue. 

The  name  Bellevue  Avenue  had  to  be  expounded 
to  Okura.  He  expected  a  belle  vue,  not  a  good 
plain  plutocratic  American  street.  When  I  told  him 
what  to  expect,  however,  he  was  intensely  occupied 
with  its  exhibition  of  assorted  architecture,  and  he 

[  134  1 


broke  into  open  comment.  "  So  very  charming!" 
he  cried  politely.  "  So  like  postcards  of  Milwaukee 
by  the  lake !  "  I  enjoyed  his  naive  enthusiasm  and 
let  it  go. 

He  wanted  to  know  who  lived  on  the  avenue, 
and  I  told  him  all  the  names  I  could  think  of.  He 
had  heard  many  of  them,  the  samurai  of  America 
being  known  to  him  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  he 
picked  up  new  crumbs  of  information  with  obvious 
gratitude. 

"Vanderbilt?  Oh,  yes."  That  was  old.  So 
were  Astor  and  Belmont. 

After  a  while  Okura  wrinkled  his  brow.  u  I  do 
not  see  the  McAlpin  mansion." 

"  The  McAlpins?  I  have  never  heard  of  them," 
I  murmured  indulgently. 

"  But  that  is  one  name  I  think  I  remember  cor 
rectly,"  Okura  answered  with  visible  anxiety. 
"  The  Bellevue-Astors,  the  Bellevue-Belmonts,  the 
Bellevue-Stratfords?  Please  forgive  me,  I  do  not 
understand.  Are  not  the  McAlpins  also  Bellevue- 
McAlpins?" 

It  was  hard  to  convince  Okura  that  this  was  not 
a  Valhalla  of  hotel  proprietors,  but  at  last  he  got 
it  straight.  We  went  back  again  as  far  as  the 
Casino,  and  I  took  him  in  to  see  the  tennis  tourna 
ment. 

Unknown  to  Okura,  I  was  forced  to  take  seats 
up  rather  far  —  well,  to  be  frank,  among  the  James 
town  and  Saunderstown  people.  But  happily  we 
had  Newport  in  the  boxes  right  below  us.  Some  of 
the  ladies  sat  facing  the  tennis,  some  sat  with  their 
backs  to  it,  and  a  great  buzz  of  conversation  rever 
berated  under  the  roof  of  the  stand  and  billowed  on 

[  135  ] 


to  the  court.  On  the  court  two  young  men  strove 
against  each  other  with  a  skill  hardly  to  be  matched 
in  any  other  game,  and  occasionally,  when  some 
thing  eccentric  or  sensational  happened,  a  ripple 
passed  through  the  crowd.  But  the  applause  was  ir 
regular.  People  had  to  be  watched  and  pointed  out. 
It  was  important  to  note  which  human  oyster  bore 
the  largest  pearl.  The  method  of  entry  and  exit 
was  significant,  and  significant  the  whole  ritual  of 
being  politely  superior  to  the  game. 

Okura  was  fascinated  by  the  game,  unfortunately, 
and  there  was  so  much  conversation  he  was  rather 
distracted. 

"  I  hope  it  does  not  annoy  you?  "  I  asked  him. 

"  Oh,  not  at  all,  thank  you  very  much.  It  is  so 
democratic !  " 

At  this  point  the  umpire  got  off  his  perch,  and 
came  forward  to  entreat  the  fine  ladies. 

"  I  have  asked  you  before  to  keep  quiet,"  he 
wailed.  "  For  God's  sake,  will  you  stop  talking?  " 

"  How  very  interesting,"  murmured  Okura. 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  the  religious  motif." 

"  Ah,  yes !  "  he  nodded,  very  gravely. 

Later  on  his  compatriot  Kumagae  was  to  play, 
and  we  decided  to  return  to  the  tournament;  but  first 
we  took  ourselves  to  Bailey's  Beach. 

Bailey's  Beach  is  a  small  section  of  the  Atlantic 
littoral  famous  for  its  seaweed.  The  seaweed  is 
of  a  lovely  dark  red  color.  It  is  swept  in  in  large 
quantities,  together  with  stray  pieces  of  melon-rind 
and  other  picnic  remnants,  and  it  forms  a  thick,  juicy 
carpet  through  which  one  wades  out  to  the  more 
fluid  sea.  By  this  attractive  marge  sit  the  ladies  in 
their  wide  hats  and  dresses  of  filmy  lace,  watching 

[  136  ] 


the  more  adventurous  sex  pick  his  way  out  of  the 
vegetable  matter.  In  the  pavilion  of  the  bath 
houses  sit  still  less  adventurous  groups. 

It  took  some  time  to  explain  to  Okura  why  this 
beach,  once  devoted  to  the  collection  of  seaweed  for 
manure,  should  now  be  dedicated  to  bathing.  But 
he  grasped  the  main  point,  that  it  was  a  private 
beach. 

"  Forgive  me,"  he  said,  "  I  see  no  Jews." 

"  That's  all  right,"  I  answered.  "  You  are  study 
ing  democracy.  There  are  no  Jews  here.  None 
allowed." 

uOh!"  he  digested  the  fact.  Then  his  eye 
brightened.  "  Ah,  you  have  your  geisha  girls  at  the 
swim-beach.  How  very  charming!" 

"  No,"  I  corrected  him.  "  Those  are  not  our 
geisha  girls.  That  is  the  *  shimmy  set.'  You  know: 
people  who  are  opposed  to  the  daylight  saving  act 
and  the  prohibition  amendment." 

"  Oh,  I  understand.  Republicans,"  he  nodded 
happily. 

As  the  Servants'  Hour  was  approaching  at  Bailey's 
Beach,  and  as  I  had  no  good  explanation  to  give 
of  it  to  Okura,  I  thought  we  might  walk  along  by 
the  ocean  before  lunch.  Okura  was  entranced  by 
the  walk,  and  by  the  fact  that  it  ran  in  front  of 
these  private  houses,  free  to  the  public  as  to  the 
wind.  Once  or  twice  we  went  down  below  stone 
walls,  with  everything  above  hidden  from  us,  but 
this  was  exceptional.  Okura  thought  the  walk  a  fine 
example  of  essential  democracy. 

"  And  what  are  those  long  tubes?  "  he  asked,  as 
we  gazed  out  toward  Portugal. 

"  Sewer  pipes,"  I  said  bluntly,  looking  at  the  great 
[  137  ] 


series  of  excretory  organs  that  these  handsome  demo 
cratic  mansions  pushed  into  the  sea. 

"Are  they  considered  beautiful?"  asked  Okura. 

"Quite,"  I  told  him.  "They  are  one  of  the 
features  provided  strictly  for  the  public." 

"So  kind!"  said  the  acquiescent  Japanese. 

We  went  to  lunch  with  a  friend  of  mine  whose 
plutocracy  was  not  entirely  intact,  and  but  for  one 
instructive  incident  it  was  an  ordinary  civilized  meal. 
That  incident,  however,  shall  live  long  in  my  mem 
ory  because  of  my  inability  to  interpret  it  to  Okura. 

We  had  just  finished  melon,  the  six  of  us  who  sat 
down,  when  the  third  man  was  called  to  the  tele 
phone. 

He  came  back,  napkin  in  hand,  and  said  to  his 
hostess,  "  I'm  awfully  sorry,  I've  got  to  leave." 

His  hostess  looked  apprehensive.  "  I  hope  it's 
nothing  serious?  " 

"Oh,  not  at  all;  please  don't  worry,"  he  re 
sponded,  plumping  down  his  napkin,  "  but  I've  just 
had  a  message  from  Mrs.  Jinks.  She's  a  man  short 
and  she  wants  me  to  come  over  to  luncheon.  So 
long.  Awfully  sorry!  " 

"  What  did  that  mean,  please?  "  Okura  inquired, 
as  we  hurried  back  to  see  Kumagae  play. 

"  Do  you  mean,   democratically?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  I  give  it  up,"  I  retorted. 

"  But  Mr.  Owen  said  you  would  want  to  inter 
pret  everything  democratic  to  me,"  Okura  ventured 
on,  "  and  is  there  not  some  secret  here  hidden  from 
me?  I  fear  I  am  very  stupid." 

Democratically,  I  repeated  dully,  I  could  not  ex 
plain. 

[  138  ] 


"  But/'  pressed  Okura,  "  '  the  world  has  been 
made  safe  for  democracy.'  I  want  so  much  to 
understand  it.  I  fear  I  do  not  yet  understand  New 
port." 

And  he  looked  at  me  with  his  innocent  eyes. 


[  139  ] 


THE  CRITIC  AND  THE  CRITICIZED 

IT  is  the  boast  of  more  than  one  proud  author, 
popular  or  unpopular,  that  he  never  reads  any  criti 
cism  of  his  own  work.  He  knows  from  his  wife  or 
his  sorrowing  friends  that  such  criticism  exists. 
Sometimes  in  hurrying  through  the  newspaper  he 
catches  sight  of  his  unforgettable  name.  Inadver 
tently  he  may  read  on,  learning  the  drift  of  the 
comment  before  he  stops  himself.  But  his  rule  is 
rigid.  He  never  reads  what  the  critics  say  about 
him. 

Before  an  author  comes  to  this  admirable  self- 
denial  he  has  usually  had  some  experience  of  the 
ill-nature  and  caprice  of  critics.  Probably  he  started 
out  in  the  friendliest  spirit.  He  said  to  himself, 
Of  course  I  don't  profess  to  like  criticism.  Nobody 
likes  to  be  criticized.  But  I  hope  I  am  big  enough 
to  stand  any  criticism  that  is  fair  and  just.  No  man 
can  grow  who  is  not  willing  to  be  criticized,  but 
so  long  as  criticism  is  helpful,  that's  all  a  man  has 
a  right  to  ask.  Is  it  meant  to  be  helpful?  If  so, 
shoot. 

After  some  experience  of  helpful  criticism,  it  will 
often  occur  to  the  sensitive  author  that  he  is  not 
being  completely  understood.  A  man's  ego  should 
certainly  not  stand  in  the  way  of  criticism,  but  hasn't 
a  man  a  right  to  his  own  style  and  his  own  person- 


ality?  What  is  the  use  of  criticism  that  is  based 
on  the  critic's  dislike  of  the  author's  personality? 
The  critic  who  has  a  grudge  against  an  author  simply 
because  he  thinks  and  feels  in  a  certain  way  is 
scarcely  likely  to  be  helpful.  The  author  and  the 
critic  are  not  on  common  ground.  And  the  case  is 
not  improved  by  the  very  evident  intrusion  of  the 
critic's  prejudices  and  limitations.  It  is  perfectly  ob 
vious  that  a  man  with  a  bias  will  see  in  a  book  just 
what  he  wants  to  see.  If  he  is  a  reactionary,  he 
will  bolster  up  his  own  case.  If  he  is  a  Bolshevik 
he  will  unfailingly  bolshevize.  So  what  is  the  use 
of  reading  criticism?  The  critic  merely  holds  the 
mirror  up  to  his  own  nature,  when  he  is  not  content 
to  reproduce  the  publisher's  prepared  review. 

The  author  goes  on  wondering,  "  What  does  he 
say  about  me?"  But  the  disappointments  are  too 
many.  Once  in  a  blue  moon  the  critic  "  under 
stands  "  the  author.  He  manages,  that  is  to  say, 
to  do  absolutely  the  right  thing  by  the  author's  ego. 
He  strokes  it  hard  and  strokes  it  the  right  way. 
After  that  he  points  out  one  or  two  of  the  things 
that  are  handicapping  the  author's  creative  force, 
and  he  shows  how  easily  such  handicaps  can  be  re 
moved.  This  is  the  helpful,  appreciative,  percep 
tive  critic.  But  for  one  of  his  kind  there  are  twenty 
bristling  young  egoists  who  want  figs  to  grow  on 
thistles  and  cabbages  to  turn  into  roses,  and  who 
blame  the  epic  for  not  giving  them  a  lyric  thrill. 
These  critics,  the  smart-alecks,  have  no  real  interest 
in  the  author.  They  are  only  interested  in  them 
selves.  And  so,  having  tackled  them  in  a  glow  of 
expectation  that  has  always  died  into  sulky  gloom, 
the  author  quits  reading  criticism  and  satisfies  his 

[  141  ] 


natural  curiosity  about  himself  by  calling  up  the  pub 
lisher  and  inquiring  after  sales. 

For  my  own  part,  I  deprecate  this  behavior  with 
out  being  able  to  point  to  much  better  models. 
Critics  are  of  course  superior  to  most  authors,  yet 
I  do  not  know  many  critics  who  like  to  be  criticized. 
It  does  not  matter  whether  they  are  thin-skinned 
literary  critics  or  the  hippopotami  of  sociology. 
They  don't  like  it,  much.  Some  meet  criticism  with 
a  sweet  resourcefulness.  They  choke  down  various 
emotions  and  become,  oh,  so  gently  receptive. 
Others  stiffen  perceptibly,  sometimes  into  a  cautious 
diplomacy  and  sometimes  into  a  pontifical  dignity 
that  makes  criticism  nothing  less  than  a  personal 
affront.  And  then  there  is  the  way  of  the  combative 
man  who  interprets  the  least  criticism  as  a  challenge 
to  a  fight.  The  rare  man  even  in  so-called  intellec 
tual  circles  is  the  man  who  takes  criticism  on  its 
merits  and  thinks  it  natural  that  he  should  not  only 
criticize  but  be  criticized. 

The  pontifical  man  is  not  necessarily  secure  in 
his  ego.  His  frigid  reception  of  criticism  corre 
sponds  to  something  like  a  secret  terror  of  it.  His 
air  of  dignity  is  really  an  air  of  offended  dignity: 
he  hates  being  called  on  to  defend  himself  in  any 
thing  like  a  rough-and-tumble  fight.  He  resents 
having  his  slow,  careful  processes  hustled  and  har 
ried  in  the  duel  of  dispute. 

To  hand  down  judgments,  often  severe  judg 
ments,  is  part  of  the  pontifical  character.  But  the 
business  of  meeting  severe  judgments  is  not  so 
palatable.  As  most  men  grow  older  and  more 
padded  in  their  armchair-criticism,  they  feel  that 
they  become  entitled  to  immunity.  The  Elder 


Statesmen  are  notorious.  The  more  dogmatic  they 
are,  the  more  they  try  to  browbeat  their  critics. 
They  see  criticism  as  the  critic's  fundamental  ina 
bility  to  appreciate  their  position. 

If  you  are  going  to  be  criticized,  how  take  it? 
The  best  preparation  for  it  is  to  establish  good 
relations  with  your  own  ego  first.  If  you  interpose 
your  ego  between  your  work  and  the  critic  you  can 
not  help  being  insulted  and  injured.  The  mere  fact 
that  you  are  being  subjected  to  criticism  is  almost 
an  injury  in  itself.  You  must  get  to  the  point  where 
you  realize  the  impregnability  of  your  own  admir 
able  character.  Then  the  bumblings  of  the  critic 
cannot  do  less  than  amuse  you,  and  may  possibly  be 
of  use.  He  is  not  so  sweet  a  partisan  as  yourself, 
yet  he  started  out  rather  indifferent  to  you,  and  the 
mere  fact  that  he  is  willing  to  criticize  you  is  a 
proof  that  he  has  overcome  the  initial  inhumanity 
of  the  human  race.  This  alone  should  help,  but 
more  than  that,  you  have  the  advantage  of  knowing 
he  is  an  amateur  on  that  topic  where  you  are  most 
expert  —  namely,  yourself.  Be  kind  to  him.  Per 
haps  if  you  are  sufficiently  kind  he  may  learn  that  the 
beginning  of  the  entente  between  you  is  that  he 
should  always  start  out  by  appeasing  your  ego. 


1 143] 


BLIND 

rlE  was,  in  a  manner  of  speaking,  useless.  He 
could  tend  the  furnace  and  help  around  the  house  — 
scour  the  bath-tub  and  clean  windows  —  but  for  a 
powerful  man  these  were  trivial  chores.  The 
trouble  with  him,  as  I  soon  discovered,  was  com 
plete  and  simple.  He  was  blind. 

I  was  sorry  for  him.  It  was  bad  enough  to  be 
blind,  but  it  was  terrible  to  be  blind  and  at  the 
mercy  of  his  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  Angier.  Mrs.  An- 
gier  ran  the  rooming-house.  She  was  a  grenadier 
of  a  woman,  very  tall  and  very  bony,  with  a  virile 
voice  and  no  touch  of  femininity  except  false  curls. 
She  wore  rusty  black,  with  long  skirts,  and  a  tas- 
seled  shawl.  Her  smile  was  as  forced  as  her  curls. 
She  hated  her  rooming-house  and  every  one  in  it. 
Her  one  desire,  insane  but  relentless,  was  to  save 
enough  money  out  of  her  establishment  to  escape 
from  it.  To  that  end  she  plugged  the  gaps  in  the 
bathroom,  doled  out  the  towels,  scrimped  on  the 
furnace,  scrooged  on  the  attendance.  And  her  chief 
sacrifice  on  the  altar  of  her  economy  was  Samuel 
Earp,  her  brother-in-law.  Since  he  was  blind  and 
useless,  he  was  dependent  on  her.  When  she  called, 
he  literally  ran  to  her,  crying,  "  Coming,  coming!  " 
He  might  be  out  on  the  window-sill,  risking  his  poor 
neck  to  polish  the  windows  that  he  would  never  see, 
but,  "  Do  I  hear  my  sister  calling  me?  Might  I  — 


would  you  be  so  good  —  ah,  you  are  very  kind. 
Coming,  Adelaide,  just  one  moment  .  .  ."  and  he 
would  paddle  down  stairs.  She  treated  him  like 
dirt.  Sometimes  one  would  arrive  during  an  inter 
view  between  them.  The  spare,  gimlet-eyed  Mrs. 
Angier  would  somehow  manage  to  compel  Samuel 
to  cringe  in  every  limb.  He  was  a  burly  man  with 
a  thick  beard,  iron-gray,  and  his  sightless  eyes  were 
hidden  behind  solemn  and  imposing  steel-rimmed 
spectacles.  Usually,  with  head  lifted  and  with  his 
voice  booming  heartily,  he  was  a  cheerful,  honest 
figure.  I  liked  Samuel  Earp,  though  he  was  a  most 
platitudinous  Englishman.  But  when  Mrs.  Angier 
tongue-lashed  him,  for  some  stupidity  like  spilling  a 
water-bucket  or  leaving  a  duster  on  the  stairs  or 
forgetting  to  empty  a  waste-basket,  he  became  in 
fantile,  tearful,  and  limp.  Her  lecturing  always 
changed  to  a  sugared  greeting  as  one  was  recog 
nized.  "  Good  e-e-evening,  isn't  it  a  pleasant  e-e- 
evening?  "  But  the  only  value  in  speaking  to  Mrs. 
Angier  was  that  it  permitted  Samuel  somehow  to 
shamble  away  to  the  limbo  of  the  basement. 

Of  course  I  wanted  to  know  how  he  became  blind. 
Luckily,  as  Mrs.  Angier  had  prosperous  relatives  in 
another  part  of  Chicago,  she  sometimes  could  be 
counted  on  to  be  absent,  and  on  those  occasions 
or  when  she  went  to  church,  Samuel  haunted  my 
room.  He  was  unhappy  unless  he  was  at  work,  and 
he  managed  to  keep  tinkering  at  something,  but  I 
really  believe  he  liked  to  chatter  to  me:  and  he  was 
more  than  anxious  to  tell  me  how  his  tragedy  had 
befallen  him. 

"  Oh,  dear,  yes,"  he  said  to  me,  "  it  happened 
during  the  strike.  They  hit  me  on  the  head,  and 

[  H5  ] 


left  me  unconscious.     And  I  have  never  seen  since, 
not  one  thing." 

"  Who  hit  you,  Samuel?" 

'Who  hit  me?  The  blackguards  who  were  out 
on  strike,  sir.  They  nearly  killed  me  with  a  piece 
of  lead  pipe.  Oh,  dear,  yes." 

It  seemed  an  unspeakable  outrage  to  me,  but  in 
Samuel  there  was  nothing  but  a  kind  of  healthy  in 
dignation.  He  was  not  bitter.  He  never  raised 
his  voice  above  its  easy  reminiscent  pitch. 

"  But  what  did  you  do  to  them?  Why  did  the 
strikers  attack  you?  What  strike  was  it?  " 

"  I  did  nothing  at  all  to  them.  But,  you  see,  my 
horse  slipped  and  when  I  was  helpless  on  the  ground 
with  my  hip  smashed,  one  of  them  knocked  me  out. 
It  was  right  up  on  the  sidewalk.  I  had  gone  after 
them  up  on  the  sidewalk,  and  I  suppose  the  flags 
were  so  slippery  that  the  horse  came  down." 

"  But  what  were  you  doing  on  a  horse?  "  I  asked 
in  despair. 

"  I  was  a  volunteer  policeman.  These  scoun 
drels  were  led  by  Debs,  and  we  were  out  to  see  that 
there  was  law  and  order  in  Chicago." 

"  Oh,  the  Pullman  strike.  Were  you  railroading 
then?" 

"  Railroading?  No,  sir,  I  was  in  the  wholesale 
dry-goods  business.  We  had  just  started  in  in  a 
small  way.  I  was  married  only  two  years,  to  Ad 
elaide's  younger  sister.  Ah,  my  accident  brought 
on  more  trouble  than  she  could  stand.  She  was 
very  different  from  Adelaide,  quite  dainty  and  lively, 
if  you  follow  me.  We  were  living  at  that  time  on 
Cottage  Grove  Avenue,  on  the  south  side.  I  was 
building  up  the  importing  end  of  the  business,  and 

[  146  ] 


then  this  thing  came,  and  everything  went  to  smash. 
They  gave  me  no  compensation  whatsoever,  to  make 
the  thing  worse." 

"  But,  Samuel,  how  did  you  come  to  be  out  against 
the  strikers?  " 

"  And  why  shouldn't  I  be  out,  I'd  like  to  know!  " 
Samuel  straightened  up  from  rubbing  a  chair,  and 
pointed  his  rag  at  my  voice.  "  These  scoundrels 
had  nothing  against  Mr.  Pullman.  He  treated 
them  like  a  prince.  But  they  took  the  bit  in  their 
teeth,  and  once  they  break  loose  where  are  we? 
The  President  didn't  get  shut  of  them  till  he  sent 
in  the  troops.  But  I've  always  contended  that  if 
we  business  men  had  taken  the  matter  in  hand  our 
selves  and  nipped  the  trouble  in  the  bud,  we'd  have 
had  no  such  lawlessness  to  deal  with  in  the  end.  It 
is  always  the  same.  The  business  men  are  the  back 
bone  of  the  community,  but  they  don't  recognize 
their  responsibility!  Take  the  sword  to  those 
bullies  and  blackguards;  that's  what  I  say!  " 

The  old  man  lifted  both  fists  like  a  dauntless 
Samson,  and  fixed  me  with  his  sightless  eyes.  He 
had  paid  hellishly  for  living  up  to  his  convictions, 
and  here  they  seemed  absolutely  unshaken. 

"  That's  all  right,  too,  Samuel,"  I  said,  feebly 
enough,  "  but  how  do  you  feel  now?  Nobody  com 
pensated  you  for  being  laid  out  in  that  big  strike, 
and  your  business  was  ruined,  and  here  you  are 
emptying  the  waste-basket.  How  about  that?  I 
think  it's  fierce  that  you  got  injured,  but  those  men 
in  the  Pullman  strike  weren't  out  to  break  up  so 
ciety.  They  were  fighting  for  their  rights,  that's 
all.  Don't  you  think  so  now?" 

"  No,  sir.  The  solid  class  of  the  community  must 
[  H7  ] 


be  depended  upon  to  preserve  law  and  order.  I 
think  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  business  men  of 
Chicago  to  put  down  ruffianism  in  that  strike  and 
to  smite  whenever  it  raised  its  head.  Smite  it 
hip  and  thigh,  as  the  saying  is.  Oh,  no.  Young 
men  have  fine  notions  about  these  things,  ha,  ha ! 
You'll  excuse  me,  won't  you,  but  you  can't  allow 
violence  and  disorder  to  run  riot  and  then  talk  of 
men's  *  rights  '  as  an  excuse.  Ah,  but  it  was  a  great 
misfortune  for  me,  I  confess.  It  was  the  end  of 
all  my  hopes.  The  doctors  thought  at  first  that  the 
sight  might  be  restored,  but  I  have  never  seen  a 
glimmer  of  light  since.  But  we  mustn't  repine,  must 
we?  That'd  never  do." 

"Samuel!"  Mrs.  Angier's  sharp  voice  pierced 
the  room. 

"  Good  gracious,  back  so  soon.  You'll  excuse  me, 
I'm  sure  .  .  .  Coming,  Adelaide,  coming!  " 

He  groped  for  his  bucket,  with  its  seedy  sponge 
all  but  submerged  in  the  dirty  water.  The  water 
splashed  a  little  as  he  hurriedly  made  for  the  door. 

"  Oh,  dear,"  he  muttered,  "  Adelaide  won't  like 
that!" 


[  148  ] 


"  AND  THE  EARTH  WAS  DRY  ' 

LlKE  all  great  ideas  it  seemed  perfectly  simple 
when  Harrod  first  disclosed  it  to  his  unimportant 
partner  John  Prentiss. 

"  Of  course  we'll  get  back  of  it.  We've  got  to," 
said  Harrod,  in  the  sanctity  of  the  directors'  room. 
"  You've  been  down  to  Hopeville  on  pay  day.  It's 
the  limit.  Ordinary  days  there's  practically  no 
trouble.  Pay  day's  a  madhouse.  How  many  men, 
do  you  think,  had  to  have  the  company  doctor  last 
pay  day? ' 

"  You  don't  expect  me  to  answer,  Robert,"  Pren 
tiss  replied  mildly.  u  You're  telling  me,  you're  not 
arguing  with  me." 

u  Twenty-five,  Prentiss,  twenty-five  drunken 
swine.  What  do  you  think  happened?  I'll  tell  you. 
That  doctor  never  stopped  a  minute  taking  stitches, 
sewing  on  scalps,  mending  skulls.  He  was  kept  on 
the  hop  all  day  and  night  all  over  the  town.  I'll 
tell  you  something  more."  The  sturdy  Harrod 
rapped  his  fist  on  the  mahogany  table,  leaning  out 
of  his  armchair.  "  The  doctor's  wife  told  me  a 
Polack  came  to  her  shack  at  two  in  the  morning 
with  half  his  thumb  hanging  off,  bitten  off  in  a 
drunken  brawl.  What  do  you  think  she  did, 
Prentiss?  She  amputated  it  herself,  on  her  own 
hook,  just  like  a  little  soldier.  She's  got  nerve,  let 
me  tell  you.  But  do  you  think  we  want  to  stand 

[  H9  ] 


for  any  more  of  this?  Not  much.  Hopeville  is 
going  dry!  " 

Mr.  Harrod  produced  a  gold  pen-knife  and 
nicked  a  cigar  emphatically.  He  brushed  the  tiny 
wedge  of  tobacco  from  his  plump  trouser  leg  on  to 
the  bronze  carpet.  He  lit  his  cigar  and  got  up  to 
have  a  little  strut. 

Poor  Prentiss  looked  at  him  as  only  a  weedy 
Yankee  can  look  at  a  man  whose  cheeks  are  rosy 
with  arrogant  health.  Why  the  stout  Harrod  who 
ate  and  drank  as  he  willed  should  be  proclaiming 
prohibition,  while  the  man  with  a  Balkan  digestive 
apparatus  should  be  a  reluctant  listener,  no  one 
could  have  analyzed.  It  never  would  have  occurred 
to  Prentiss  to  be  so  restlessly  efficient.  But  Harrod 
was  as  simple  as  chanticleer.  He'd  made  up  his 
mind. 

"  We'll  back  Billy  Sunday.  His  advance  agent 
will  be  in  town  this  week,"  Mr.  Harrod  unfolded. 
"  We'll  put  the  whole  industry  behind  him.  Drink 
is  a  constant  source  of  inefficiency.  It's  an  un 
deniable  cause.  When  do  we  have  accidents?  On 
Mondays,  regularly.  The  men  come  back  stupe 
fied  from  the  rotgut  they've  been  drinking,  and  it's 
simple  luck  if  they  don't  set  fire  to  the  mine.  The 
Hopeville  mine  is  perfectly  safe.  Except  for  that 
one  big  disaster  we  had,  it's  one  of  the  safest  mines 
in  the  country.  But  how  can  you  call  any  mine  safe 
if  the  fellows  handling  dynamite  and  the  men  work 
ing  the  cage  are  just  as  likely  as  not  to  have  a  hang 
over?  We'll  stop  it.  We'll  make  that  town  so 
dry  that  you  can't  find  a  beer  bottle  in  it.  It  took 
me  some  time  to  realize  the  common  sense  of  this 
situation,  but  it's  as  clear  as  daylight;  it's  ridicu- 

[  150] 


lously  clear.     We're  fools,  Prentiss,  that  we  didn't 
advocate  prohibition  twenty  years  ago." 

'*  Twenty  years  ago,  Robert,"  Prentiss  murmured, 
u  you  were  checking  coal  at  the  pit-head.  You 
weren't  so  damned  worried  about  evolving  policies 
for  the  mine  owners  twenty  years  ago." 

"  Well,  you  know  what  I  mean,"  Robert  Harrod 
rejoined. 

"  Perfectly,"  retorted  Prentiss.  "  And  I'm  with 
you,  though  all  the  perfumes  of  Arabia  won't  cleanse 
these  little  hands." 

That  was  the  first  gospel,  so  to  speak,  and  Har 
rod  was  as  good  as  his  word.  He  saw  Sunday's  ad 
vance  agent,  he  rallied  the  industry,  he  lunched  with 
innumerable  Christians  and  had  a  few  painful  but 
necessary  political  conferences.  The  prohibitionist 
manager  he  discovered  to  be  a  splendid  fellow  — 
direct,  cleancut,  intelligent  indefatigable.  The 
whole  great  state  was  won  to  prohibition  'after  a 
strenuous  preparation  and  a  typically  "  bitter  "  cam 
paign. 

And  everything  went  well  at  Hopeville.  At  first, 
not  unnaturally,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  rebellion. 
A  few  of  the  miners  —  you  know  Irish  miners, 
born  trouble-makers  —  talked  considerably.  Some 
thing  in  them  took  kindly  to  the  relief  from  monot 
ony  that  came  with  a  periodic  explosion,  and  they 
muttered  blasphemously  about  the  prohibitionists, 
and  time  hung  heavy  on  their  hands.  A  few  of  them 
pulled  out,  preceded  by  the  gaunt  Scotchman  who 
had  run  the  bare  u  hotel "  where  most  of  the 
whisky  was  consumed.  These  were  led  by  a  sullen 
compatriot  of  their  own,  a  man  who  once  was  a  fine 
miner  but  who  had  proved  his  own  best  customer  in 


the  liquor  business  and  whose  contour  suggested 
that  his  body  was  trying  desperately  to  blow  a  bulb. 
One  miner  left  for  a  neighboring  state  (still  wet) 
to  purchase  a  pair  of  boots.  He  crawled  back  on 
foot  after  a  week,  minus  the  new  boots,  plus  a  pawn- 
ticket,  and  most  horribly  chewed  by  an  unintelligent 
watchdog  who  had  misunderstood  his  desire  to  bor 
row  a  night's  lodging  in  the  barn.  The  drinking 
haunts  were  desolate  reminders  of  bygone  enter 
tainments  for  weeks  after  the  law  took  effect,  and 
few  of  the  younger  men  could  look  forward  to  tame 
amusement,  amusement  that  had  no  elysium  in  it, 
without  a  twinge  of  disgust.  But  on  the  whole, 
Hopeville  went  dry  with  surprising  simplicity.  A 
great  many  of  the  miners  were  neither  English, 
Scotch,  Cornish,  Welsh  nor  Irish,  but  Austrians 
and  Italians  and  Poles,  and  these  were  not  so  inured 
to  drinking  and  biting  each  other  as  Mr.  Harrod 
might  have  thought.  The  mud  in  Hopeville,  it  is 
true,  was  often  from  nine  inches  to  four  feet  deep, 
and  there  were  no  named  streets,  and  no  known 
amusements,  and  a  very  slim  possibility  of  distrac 
tion  for  the  unmarried  men.  After  prohibition, 
however,  a  far  from  unpleasant  club  house  was 
founded,  with  lots  of  "  dangerous  "  reading  ma 
terial,  and  a  segregated  place  for  home-made  music, 
and  bright  lights  and  a  fire,  and  a  place  to  write 
letters,  and  a  pungent  odor  of  something  like  syndi 
calism  in  the  air. 

That  was  the  beginning.  The  men  did  not  de 
tonate  on  pay  day,  except  in  lively  conversation. 
There  was  less  diffused  blasphemy.  It  concentrated 
rather  particularly  on  one  or  two  eminent  men. 
And  when  the  virtues  and  defects  of  these  men  were 

[  152  ] 


sufficiently  canvassed,  the  u  system "  beyond  them 
was  analyzed.  Even  the  delight  of  the  Hunkies  in 
dirt,  or  the  meanness  of  certain  bosses,  began  to 
be  less  engrossing  than  the  exact  place  in  the  ter 
restrial  economy  where  Harrod  and  Prentiss  got 
off. 

"  Well,  Robert,"  inquired  the  man  of  migraine, 
back  in  the  home  office,  "  how  is  your  precious 
prohibition  working?  It  seems  to  me  the  doctor's 
wife  is  the  sole  beneficiary  so  far." 

"Working?"  the  rubicund  Harrod  responded 
urgently.  "  I  don't  know  what  we're  going  to  do 
about  it.  You  can't  rely  on  the  men  for  anything. 
A  few  years  ago,  after  all,  they  took  their  wages 
over  to  Mason  and  blew  it  all  in,  or  they  soaked  up 
enough  rum  in  Hopeville  to  satisfy  themselves,  and 
come  back  on  the  job.  Now,  what  do  they  do? 
They  quit  for  two  weeks  when  they  want  to.  They 
quit  for  a  month  at  a  time.  And  still  they  have  a 
balance.  You  can't  deal  with  such  men.  They're 
infernally  independent.  They're  impudent  with 
prosperity.  I  never  saw  anything  like  it.  We  can't 
stand  it.  I  don't  know  what  we're  going  to  do." 

"  You're  going  to  back  the  liquor  trade,  Robert, 
of  course.  That's  simple  enough." 

"You  may  laugh,  but  it  is  too  late,  I  tell  you, 
the  harm's  done.  We  can't  remedy  it.  National 
prohibition  is  right  on  top  of  us.  I  don't  know  what 
we'll  do." 

"  Sell  'em  Bevo.  That'll  keep  them  conservative. 
Ever  drink  it?" 

"Bevo?  Conservative?  Prentiss,  this  is  seri 
ous.  These  men  are  completely  out  of  hand." 

"Well,  aren't  they  more  efficient?" 
[   153  ] 


"  Of  course  they're  more  efficient.  They're  too 
damnably  efficient.  They  wanted  Hopeville  drained 
and  they're  getting  it  drained.  They'll  insist  on 
having  it  paved  next.  They'll  want  hot  and  cold 
water.  They'll  want  bathtubs.  That'll  be  the 
end." 

"  The  end?  Come,  Robert,  perhaps  only  the 
beginning  of  the  end." 

"  It's  very  amusing  to  you,  Prentiss,  but  you're 
in  on  this  with  me.  We've  forced  these  working- 
men  into  prohibition,  and  now  they're  sober,  they're 
everlastingly  sober.  They're  making  demands  and 
getting  away  with  it.  We've  got  to  go  on  or  go 
under.  Wake  up,  man.  I've  played  my  cards. 
What  can  we  do?  " 

"  What  can  we  do?  That  is  not  the  point  now. 
Now  the  point  is,  what'll  they  do." 


[  154 


TELEGRAMS 

IN  my  simple  world  a  cablegram  is  so  rare  that 
I  should  treasure  the  mere  envelope.  I  should  not 
be  likely  to  resurrect  it.  It  would  be  buried  in 
a  bureau,  like  a  political  badge  or  a  cigar-cutter  — 
but  there  is  a  silly  magpie  in  every  man,  and  a  cable 
I  would  preserve.  To  discuss  cablegrams  or  even 
cut-rate  wireless,  however,  would  be  an  affectation. 
These  are  the  orchids  of  communication.  It  is  the 
ordinary  telegram  I  sing. 

There  was  a  magnificence  about  a  quick  commu 
nication  in  the  days  before  the  Western  Union. 
Horsemen  went  galloping  roughshod  through  scat 
tering  villages.  It  was  quite  in  order  for  a  panting 
messenger  to  rush  in,  make  his  special  delivery,  and 
drop  dead.  This  has  ceased  to  be  his  custom.  In 
Mr.  Veblen's  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class  there  is 
one  omission.  He  neglected  to  deal  with  that  great 
adept  in  leisure,  the  messenger-boy.  "  Messen 
ger-boy  "  is  a  misnomer.  He  is  either  a  puling 
infant  or  a  tough,  exceedingly  truculent  little  ogre 
of  uncertain  age  and  habit.  His  life  is  consecrated. 
He  cares  for  nothing  except  to  disprove  the  axiom 
that  a  straight  line  is  the  shortest  distance  between 
two  points.  Foreseeing  this  cult  of  the  messenger 
service,  the  designers  of  the  modern  American  city 
abandoned  all  considerations  of  beauty,  mystery,  and 
suggestion  in  an  heroic  effort  to  circumvent  the  boy 

[  155  ] 


in  blue.  But  the  boy  in  blue  cannot  be  beaten. 
By  what  art  he  is  selected  I  know  not.  Whether 
he  is  attributable  to  environment  or  heredity  I  dare 
not  guess.  But  with  a  possible  inferiority  to  his 
rival,  the  coat-room  boy,  and,  of  course,  nature's 
paradox  the  crab,  he  is  supreme. 

It  is  not  a  telegram  in  its  last  stages  that  has 
magic.  Much  better  for  the  purposes  of  drama  to 
have  Cleopatra  receive  a  breathless  minion,  not  a 
laconic  imp  with  a  receipt  to  be  signed.  Yet  a  tele 
gram  has  magic.  If  you  are  hardened  you  do  not 
register.  It  is  the  fresh  who  have  the  thrill.  But 
no  one  is  totally  superior  to  telegrams.  Be  you  ever 
so  inured,  there  is  one  telegram,  the  telegram,  which 
will  find  your  core. 

Sometimes  at  a  hotel-desk  I  stand  aside  while 
an  important  person,  usually  a  man  but  occasionally 
a  woman,  gets  a  handful  of  mail  without  any  sign 
of  curiosity,  and  goes  to  the  elevator  without  even 
sorting  out  the  wires.  Such  persons  are  marked. 
They  are  in  public  life.  It  is  pardonable.  There 
must  be  public  men  and  public  women.  I  should  not 
ask  any  one  to  give  up  his  career  for  the  peculiar 
ecstasies  of  the  telegram.  But  no  one  can  deny  that 
these  persons  have  parted  with  an  essence  of  their  be 
ing.  What  if  I  find  a  solitary  notice?  "  It  is  under 
your  door."  I  bolt  for  the  elevator,  thrilled,  alive. 

It  may  be  suggested  that  my  over-laden  pre 
decessors  are  not  in  public  life;  that  they  are  very 
distinguished,  very  wealthy  personages,  receiving 
private  advices  as  to  their  stocks,  their  spouses,  their 
children,  their  wine-bin,  their  plumbing,  or  any  other 
of  their  responsibilities,  accessories,  possessions. 
With  every  deference  I  answer  that  you  are  mis- 

[  156  ] 


taken.  Unless  their  riches  are  in  a  stocking,  these 
are  the  custodians  of  tangible  goods  and  chattels. 
Their  title  may  be  secure,  but  not  their  peace  of 
mind.  Whatever  they  wish,  they  are  obliged  to 
administrate.  Whoever  their  attorney,  the  law  of 
gravitation  keeps  pulling,  pulling  at  their  chan 
deliers.  And  so  in  some  degree  they  are  connected 
with,  open  to,  shared  by,  innumerable  people. 
Without  necessarily  being  popular,  they  are  in  the 
center  of  populace.  They  have  to  meet,  if  only  to 
repel,  demands.  I  do  not  blame  them  for  thus  be 
ing  public  characters.  It  is  often  against  their  de 
sires.  But  being  called  upon  to  convert  a  part  of 
their  souls  into  a  reception-room,  a  place  where 
people  can  be  decently  bowed  out  as  well  as  in,  it 
follows  that  they  give  up  some  of  their  ecstatic 
privacy  in  order  to  retain  the  rest.  This  I  do  not 
decry.  For  certain  good  and  valuable  considera 
tions  one  might  be  induced  to  barter  some  of  one's 
own  choice  stock  of  privacy,  but  for  myself  I  should 
insist  on  retaining  enough  to  keep  up  my  interest 
in  telegrams.  To  be  so  beset  by  Things  as  to  be 
dogged  by  urgent  brokers  and  punctilious  butlers, 
no. 

"  There's  a  telegram  upstairs  for  you,  sir."  "  A 
telegram?  How  long  has  it  been  here?"  "It 
came  about  half  an  hour  ago."  "  Ah,  thank 
you.  .  .  .  No,  never  mind,  I'm  going  upstairs." 
What  may  not  this  sort  of  banality  precede?  Per 
haps  another  banality,  in  ink.  But  not  always.  A 
telegram  is  an  arrow  that  is  aimed  to  fly  straight 
and  drive  deep.  Whether  from  friend  or  rival, 
whether  verdict  or  appeal,  it  may  lodge  where  the 
heart  is,  and  stay.  From  an  iron-nerved  ticker  the 

[  157  ] 


message  has  come,  singing  enigmatically  across  the 
country.  But  there  is  a  path  that  leaps  out  of  the 
dingy  office  to  countless  court-rooms,  business  build 
ings,  homes,  hospitals.  That  office  is  truly  a  gang 
lion  from  which  piercing  nerve-fibers  curve  into  the 
last  crevices  of  human  lives.  When  you  enter  it  to 
send  a  telegram  it  may  depress  you.  You  submit 
your  confidence  across  a  public  counter.  But  what 
does  it  matter  to  a  creature  glazed  by  routine?  He 
enumerates  your  words  backwards,  contemptuous  of 
their  meaning.  To  him  a  word  is  not  a  bullet  — 
just  an  inert  little  lump  of  lead. 

Some  messages  come  with  a  force  not  realizable. 
Tragedy  dawns  slowly.  The  mind  envisages,  not 
apprehending.  And  then,  for  all  the  customary 
world  outside,  one  is  penned  in  one's  trouble  alone. 
One  remembers  those  sailors  who  were  imprisoned 
in  a  vessel  on  fire  in  the  Hudson.  Cut  off  from 
escape,  redhot  iron  plates  between  them  and  the 
assuaging  waters  on  every  side,  they  could  see  the 
free,  could  cry  out  to  them,  could  almost  touch  hands. 
But  they  had  met  their  fate.  It  is  strange  that  by  a 
slip  of  paper  one  may  meet  one's  own.  There  are 
countries  to-day  where  the  very  word  telegram  must 
threaten  like  a  poisoned  spear.  And  such  wounds  as 
are  inflicted  in  curt  official  words  time  is  itself  often 
powerless  to  heal.  As  some  see  it,  dread  in  sus 
pense  is  worse  than  dreadful  certainty.  But  there 
are  shocks  which  are  irreparable.  It  is  cruel  to 
break  those  shocks,  crueler  to  deliver  them. 

All  urgency  is  not  ominous.  If,  like  a  religion, 
the  telegram  attends  on  death,  it  attends  no  less 
eagerly  on  love  and  birth.  "  A  boy  arrived  this 
morning.  Father  and  child  doing  well  " —  this  is 

[  158  ] 


more  frequently  the  tenor  of  the  wire.  And  the 
wire  may  be  the  rapier  of  comedy.  Do  you  remem 
ber  Bernard  Shaw's  rebuff  to  Lady  Randolph 
Churchill  for  asking  him  to  dinner?  He  had  the 
vegetarian  view  of  eating  his  "  fellow-creatures." 
He  chided  her  for  inviting  a  person  of  u  my  well- 
known  habits."  "  Know  nothing  of  your  habits," 
came  the  blithe  retort,  "  hope  they're  better  than 
your  manners." 

The  art  of  the  telegram  is  threatened.  Once  we 
struggled  to  put  our  all  in  ten  words  —  simple,  at 
least,  if  not  sensuous  and  passionate.  Now  the  day- 
letter  and  night-letter  lead  us  into  garrulity.  No 
transition  from  Greek  to  Byzantine  could  be  worse 
than  this.  We  should  resist  it.  The  time  will 
doubtless  come  when  our  descendants  will  recall  us  as 
austere  and  frugal  in  our  use  of  the  telegram.  But 
we  should  preserve  this  sign  of  our  Spartan  man 
hood.  Let  us  defer  the  softness  and  effeminacy  of 
long,  cheap  telegrams.  Let  us  remain  primitive, 
virginal,  terse. 


[   159] 


OF  PLEASANT  THINGS 

WHEN  I  was  a  child  we  lived  on  the  border  of 
the  town,  and  the  road  that  passed  our  windows 
went  in  two  ways.  One  branch  ran  up  the  hill  under 
the  old  city  gateway  and  out  through  the  mean  city 
"  lanes."  The  other  branch  turned  round  our 
corner  and  ran  into  the  countryside.  Day  and  night 
many  carts  lumbered  by  our  windows,  in  plain  hear 
ing.  In  the  day-time  I  took  no  pleasure  in  them, 
but  when  I  awoke  at  night  and  the  thick  silence  was 
broken  by  the  noise  of  a  single  deliberate  cart  it 
filled  me  with  vague  enchantment.  I  still  feel  this 
enchantment.  The  steady  effort  of  the  wheels,  their 
rattle  as  they  passed  over  the  uneven  road,  their 
crunching  deliberateness,  gives  me  a  sense  of  acute 
pleasure.  That  pleasure  is  at  its  highest  when  a 
solitary  lantern  swings  underneath  the  wagon.  In 
the  old  days  the  load  might  be  coal,  with  the  colliery- 
man  sitting  hunched  on  the  driver's  seat,  a  battered 
silhouette.  Or  the  load  might  be  from  the  brewery, 
making  a  start  at  dawn.  Or  it  might  be  a  load  of 
singing  harvest-women,  hired  in  the  market  square 
by  the  sweet  light  of  the  morning.  But  not  the 
wagon  or  the  sight  of  the  wagoner  pleases  me,  so 
much  as  that  honest,  steady,  homely  sound  coming 
through  the  vacancy  of  the  night.  I  like  it,  I  find 
it  friendly  and  companionable,  and  I  hope  to  like 
it  till  I  die. 

[  160  ] 


The  city  sounds  improve  with  distance.  Some 
times,  in  lazy  summer  evenings,  I  like  the  faint 
rumble,  the  growing  roar,  the  receding  rumble  of  the 
elevated,  with  the  suggestion  of  its  open  windows 
and  its  passengers  relaxed  and  indolent  after  the 
exhausting  day.  Always  I  like  the  moaning  sounds 
from  the  river  craft,  carried  so  softly  into  the  town. 
But  New  York  sounds  and  Chicago  sounds  are 
usually  discords.  I  hate  bells  —  the  sharp  spinster- 
ish  telephone  bell,  the  lugubrious  church  bell,  the 
clangorous  railway  bell.  Well,  perhaps  not  the 
sleigh  bell  or  the  dinner  bell. 

I  like  the  element  of  water.  An  imagist  should 
write  of  the  waters  of  Lake  Michigan  which  circle 
around  Mackinac  Island:  the  word  crystal  is  the 
hackneyed  word  for  those  pure  lucent  depths. 
When  the  sun  shines  on  the  bottom,  every  pebble 
is  seen  in  a  radiance  of  which  the  jewel  is  a  happy 
memory.  In  Maine  lakes  and  along  the  coast  of 
Maine  one  has  the  same  visual  delight  in  water  as 
clear  as  crystal,  and  on  the  coast  of  Ireland  I  have 
seen  the  Atlantic  Ocean  slumber  in  a  glowing  ame 
thyst  or  thunder  in  a  wall  of  emerald.  On  the 
southern  shore  of  Long  Island,  who  has  not  seen 
the  sumptuous  ultramarine,  with  a  surf  as  snowy 
as  apple-blossom?  After  shrill  and  meager  New 
York,  the  color  of  that  Atlantic  is  drenching. 

The  dancing  harbor  of  New  York  is  a  beauty 
that  never  fades,  but  I  hate  the  New  York  skyline 
except  at  night.  In  the  day-time  those  punctured 
walls  seem  imbecile  to  me.  They  look  out  on  the 
river  with  such  a  lidless,  such  an  inhuman,  stare. 
Nothing  of  man  clings  to  them.  They  are  barren 
as  the  rocks,  empty  as  the  deserted  vaults  of  cliff- 

[  161  ] 


dwellers.  A  little  wisp  of  white  steam  may  sug 
gest  humanity,  but  not  these  bleak  cliffs  themselves. 
At  night,  however,  they  become  human.  They 
look  out  on  the  black  moving  river  with  marigold 
eyes.  And  Madison  Square  at  nightfall  has  the 
same,  or  even  a  more  aetherial,  radiance.  From 
the  hurried  streets  the  walls  of  light  seem  like  a 
deluge  of  fairy  splendor.  This  is  always  a  gay 
transformation  to  the  eye  of  the  citydweller,  who 
is  forever  oppressed  by  the  ugliness  around  him. 

Flowers  are  pleasant  things  to  most  people.  I 
like  flowers,  but  seldom  cut  flowers.  The  gather 
ing  of  wild  flowers  seems  to  me  unnecessarily  wan 
ton,  and  is  it  not  hateful  to  see  people  coming 
home  with  dejected  branches  of  dogwood  or  broken 
autumn  festoons  or  apple-blossoms  already  rust 
ing  in  the  train?  I  like  flowers  best  in  the  fullness 
of  the  meadow  or  the  solitude  of  a  forsaken  garden. 
Few  things  are  so  pleasant  as  to  find  oneself  all  alone 
in  a  garden  that  has,  so  to  speak,  drifted  out  to  sea. 
The  life  that  creeps  up  between  its  broken  flagstones, 
the  life  that  trails  so  impudently  across  the  path, 
the  life  that  spawns  in  the  forgotten  pond  —  this 
has  a  fascination  beyond  the  hand  of  gardeners. 
Once  I  shared  a  neglected  garden  with  an  ancient 
turtle,  ourselves  the  only  living  things  within  sight  or 
sound.  When  the  turtle  wearied  of  sunning  himself 
he  shuffled  to  the  artificial  pond,  and  there  he  lazily 
paddled  through  waters  laced  down  with  scum.  It 
was  pleasant  to  see  him,  a  not  too  clean  turtle  in 
waters  not  too  clean.  Perhaps  if  the  family 
had  been  home  the  gardener  would  have  scoured 
him. 

Yet  order  is  pleasant.  If  I  were  a  millionaire  — 
[  162  ] 


which  I  thank  heaven  I  am  not,  nor  scarcely  a  mil 
lionth  part  of  one  —  I  should  take  pleasure  in  the 
silent  orderliness  that  shadowed  me  through  my 
home.  Those  invisible  hands  that  patted  out  the 
pillows  and  shined  the  shoes  and  picked  up  every 
thing,  even  the  Sunday  newspapers  —  those  I  should 
enjoy.  I  should  enjoy  especially  the  guardian  angel 
who  hid  from  me  the  casualties  of  the  laundry  and 
put  the  surviving  laundry  away.  In  heaven  there  is 
no  laundry,  or  mending  of  laundry.  For  the  mil 
lionaire  the  laundry  is  sent  and  the  laundry  is  sorted 
away.  Blessed  be  the  name  of  the  millionaire;  I 
envy  him  little  else.  Except,  perhaps,  his  linen 
sheets. 

The  greatest  of  all  platitudes  is  the  platitude 
that  life  is  in  the  striving.  Is  this  altogether  true? 
I  think  not.  Not  for  those  menial  offices  so  neces 
sary  to  our  decent  existence,  so  little  decent  in  their 
victims  or  themselves.  But  one  does  remember  cer 
tain  striving  that  brought  with  it  almost  instant  hap 
piness,  like  the  reward  of  the  child  out  coasting  or 
the  boy  who  has  made  good  in  a  hard,  grinding 
game.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  one's  first  delicious 
surrender  to  fatigue  after  a  long  day's  haul  on  a 
hot  road.  That  surrender,  in  all  one's  joints,  with 
all  one's  driven  will,  is  the  ecstasy  that  even  the 
Puritan  allowed  himself.  It  is  the  nectar  of  the 
pioneer.  In  our  civilization  we  take  it  away  from 
the  workers,  as  we  take  the  honey  from  the  bees  — 
but  I  wish  to  think  of  things  pleasant,  not  of  our 
civilization.  Fatigue  of  this  golden  kind  is  unlike 
the  leaden  fatigue  of  compulsion  or  of  routine.  It  is 
the  tang  that  means  a  man  is  young.  If  one  gets  it 
from  games,  even  golf,  I  think  it  is  pleasant.  It  is 

[  163  ] 


the  great  charm  that  Englishmen  possess  and  under 
stand. 

These  are  ordinary  pleasant  things,  not  the  pleas 
ant  things  of  the  poet.  They  barely  leave  the  hall 
of  pleasant  things.  A  true  poet,  I  imagine,  is  one 
who  captures  in  the  swift  net  of  his  imagination  the 
wild  pleasantnesses  and  delights  that  to  me  would  be 
flying  presences  quickly  lost  to  view.  But  every  man 
must  bag  what  he  can  in  his  own  net,  whether  he  be 
rational  or  poetic.  For  myself,  I  have  to  use  my 
imagination  to  keep  from  being  snared  by  too  many 
publicists  and  professors  and  persons  of  political  in 
tent.  These  are  invaluable  servants  of  humanity, 
admirable  masters  of  our  mundane  institutions.  But 
they  fill  the  mind  with  -alions.  They  pave  the 
meadows  with  concrete ;  they  lose  the  free  swing  of 
pleasant  things. 


THE  AVIATOR 

So  endlessly  the  gray-lipped  sea 
Kept  me  within  his  eye, 
And  lean  he  licked  his  hollow  flanks 
And  followed  up  the  sky. 

I  was  the  lark  whose  song  was  heard 
When  I  was  lost  to  sight, 
I  was  the  golden  arrow  loosed 
To  pierce  the  heart  of  night. 

I  fled  the  little  earth,  I  climbed 
Above  the  rising  sun, 
I  met  the  morning  in  a  blaze 
Before  my  hour  was  gone. 

I  ran  beyond  the  rim  of  space, 

Its  reins  I  flung  aside, 

Laughter  was  mine  and  mine  was  youth 

And  all  my  own  was  pride. 

So  endlessly  the  gray-lipped  sea 
Kept  me  within  his  eyef 
And  lean  he  licked  his  hollow  flanks 
And  followed  up  the  sky. 

From  end  to  end  I  knew  the  way, 
I  had  no  doubt  or  fear; 
[  165  ] 


The  minutes  were  a  forfeit  paid 
To  fetch  the  landfall  near. 

But  all  at  once  my  heart  I  held, 
My  carol  frozen  died, 
A  white  cloud  laid  her  cheek  to  mine 
And  wove  me  to  her  side. 

Her  icy  fingers  clasped  my  flesh, 
Her  hair  drooped  in  my  face, 
And  up  we  fell  and  down  we  rose 
And  twisted  into  space. 

So  endlessly  the  gray-lipped  sea 
Kept  me  within  his  eye, 
And  lean  he  licked  his  hollow  flanks 
And  followed  up  the  sky. 

Laughter  was  mine  and  mine  was  youth, 
I  pressed  the  edge  of  life, 
I  kissed  the  sun  and  raced  the  wind, 
I  found  immortal  strife. 

Out  of  myself  I  spent  myself, 
I  lost  the  mortal  share, 
My  grave  is  in  the  ashen  plain, 
My  spirit  in  the  air. 

Good-by,  sweet  pride  of  man  that  flew, 
Sweet  pain  of  man  that  bled, 
I  was  the  lark  that  spilled  his  heart, 
The  golden  arrow  sped. 


[  166  ] 


So  endlessly  the  gray-lipped  sea 
Kept  me  within  his  eye, 
And  lean  he  licked  his  hollow  flanks 
And  followed  up  the  sky. 


THE    END 


[  167  ] 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


MAR  2  6  1968  2  0 

IN  r.rAC,L<3 

M/V*  12  >:36 

trr"O  1_P 

HE^U 

n  ^  igc  ^7  pM 

•wate  1  3  u' 
.  (-1^0 

JUL    2l&68^^ 

LD  21A-60m-10,'fi5 
(F7763slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


